THE PROGRESS 

OF THE 

CENTURY 



BY ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE ; PROF. WILLIAM 
RAMSAY ; PROF. WILLIAM MATTHEW FL1NDERS- 
PETR1E; SIR JOSEPH NORMAN LOCKYER ; EDWARD 
CAIRD; WILLIAM OSLER ; W. W. KEEN; PROF. 
EL1HU THOMSON; PRESIDENT THOMAS CORWIN 
MENDENHALL; SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE; 
CAPTAIN ALFRED T. MAHAN ; ANDREW LANG ; 
THOMAS C. CLARKE; CARDINAL JAMES GIB- 
BONS ; REV. ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN ; PROF. 
RICHARD J. H. GOTTHEIL; PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH 



NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER &■ BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

lqoi 



L 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CON6RESS, 
Two Comes Received 

APR. 16 1901 

COPYRIGHT ENTRY 

CLASS &> XXo. m 
COPY B. 



1 



p<^V 



Copyright, iqoi, by Harpkk & Hkothbrs. 

Copyright, 1901, by Thk Sun Printing anu Publishing Association. 

--/// rights reserved. 



CONTENTS 



PAGt 

EVOLUTION. By Alfred Russel Wallace, LL.D., 
D.C.L., F.R.S 3 

CHEMISTRY. By Prof. William Ramsay. Ph.D., 
F.R.S. , F.C.S., Officer of the Legion of Honor . 33 

ARCHAEOLOGY. By Prof. William Matthew Flin- 
ders -Petrie, D.C.L., LL.D., Edwards Professor 
of Egyptology, University College, London . . 73 

ASTRONOMY. By Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, C.B., 
F.R.S., Director of Solar Physics Observatory, 
South Kensington 105 

PHILOSOPHY. By Edward Caird, LL.D., D.C.L., Pro- 
fessor of Moral Philosophy, Glasgow . . . .145 

MEDICINE. By William Osler, LL.D., Professor of 
Medicine and Physician to Hospital, Johns Hop- 
kins Medical School 173 

SURGERY. By W. W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., F.R.C.S. (Hon.), 
Professor of the Principles of Surgery and 
of Clinical Surgery, Jefferson Medical Col- 
lege, Philadelphia 2I 7 

ELECTRICITY. By Prof. Elihu Thomson, A.M. Ph.D., 
Chevalier and Officer of the Legion of Honor 265 

PHYSICS. By President Thomas Corwin Menden- 
hall, Ph.D., D.Sc, LL.D., Member National Acad- 
emy of Science 3»3 

iii 



CONTENTS 

PAGll 

WAR. By the Right Hon. Sir Charles Wentworth 
Dilke, LL.M 333 

NAVAL SHIPS. By Captain Alfred T. Mahan, late 

U.S.N. , D.C.L., LL.D 355 

LITERATURE. By Andrew Lang, Hon. Fellow Mer- 
ton College, Oxford 389 

ENGINEERING. By Thomas C. Clarke. Past Presi- 
dent of the American Society of Civil Engi- 
neers 421 

RELIGION : 

Catholicism. By Cardinal James Gibbons . . . 455 

Protestantism. By Rev. Alexander V. G. Allen, 
Professor of Church History in the Epis- 
copal Theological School at Cambridge, 
.Mass 477 

The Jews and Judaism. By Professor Richard 
J. H. Gottheil 498 

Free-Thought. By Professor Goldwin Smith . 539 



EVOLUTION 



EVOLUTION 



AMONG the great and fertile scientific conceptions 
•*"* which have either originated or become firmly es- 
tablished during the nineteenth century, the theory of 
evolution, if not the greatest of them all, will certainly 
take its place in the front rank. As a partial explana- 
tion (for no complete explanation is possible to finite in- 
telligence) of the phenomena of nature, it illuminates 
every department of science, from the study of the most 
remote cosmic phenomena accessible to us to that of the 
minutest organisms revealed by the most powerful mi- 
croscopes ; while upon the great problem of the mode of 
origin of the various forms of life — long considered in- 
soluble — it throws so clear a light that to many biologists 
it seems to afford as complete a solution, in principle, as 
we can expect to reach. 

THE NATURE AND LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 

So many of the objections which are still made to the 
theory of evolution, and especially to that branch of it 
which deals with living organisms, rest upon a miscon- 
ception of what it professes to explain, and even of what 
any theory can possibly explain, that a few words on 
its nature and limits seem to be necessary. 

Evolution, as a general principle, implies that all things 
in the universe, as we see them, have arisen from other 
things which preceded them by a process of modification, 
under the action of those all-pervading but mysterious 

3 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

agencies known to us as "natural forces/' or, more gen- 
erally, " the laws of nature." More particularly the term 
evolution implies that the process is an "unrolling," or 
"unfolding," derived probably from the way in which 
leaves and flowers are usually rolled up or crumpled up 
in the bud and grow into their perfect form by unrolling 
or unfolding. Insects in the pupa and vertebrates in the 
embryo exhibit a somewhat similar condition of folding, 
and the word is therefore very applicable to an extensive 
range of phenomena ; but it must not be taken as uni- 
versally applicable, since in the material world there are 
other modes of orderly change under natural laws to 
which the terms development or evolution are equally 
applicable. The " continuity " of physical phenomena, 
as illustrated by the late Sir William Grove in 1866, has 
the same general meaning, but evolution implies more 
than mere continuity or succession — something like 
growth or definite change from form to form under the 
action of unchangeable laws. 

The point to be especially noted here is, that evolu- 
tion, even if it is essential^ a true and complete theory 
of the universe, can only explain the existing condi- 
tions of nature by showing that it has been derived from 
some pre-existing condition through the action of known 
forces and laws. It may also show the high probability 
of a similar derivation from a still earlier condition ; but 
the further back we go the more uncertain must be our 
conclusions, while we can never make any real approach 
to the absolute beginnings of things. Herbert Spencer, 
and many other thinkers before him, have shown that 
if we try to realize the absolute nature of the simplest 
phenomena, we are inevitably landed either in a contra- 
diction or in some unthinkable proposition. Thus, sup- 
pose we ask, Is matter infinitely divisible, or is it not? 
If we say it is, we cannot think it out, since all infinity, 
however it may be stated in words, is really unthinkable. 

4 



EVOLUTION 

If we say there is a limit — the ultimate atom — then, 
as all size is comparative, we can imagine a being to 
whom this atom seems as large as an apple or even a 
house does to us; and we then find it quite unthink- 
able that this mass of matter should be in its nature 
absolutely indivisible even by an infinite force. It 
follows that all explanations of phenomena can only be 
partial explanations. They can inform us of the last 
change or the last series of changes which brought about 
the actual conditions now existing, and they can often 
enable us to predict future changes to a limited extent ; 
but both the infinite past and the remote future are alike 
beyond our powers. Yet the explanations that the 
theory of evolution gives us are none the less real and 
none the less important, especially when we compare its 
teachings with the wild guesses or the total ignorance 
of the thinkers of earlier ages. 

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE IDEA OF 
EVOLUTION 

If we trace, however briefly, the gradual development 
of knowledge and speculation on this subject, we shall 
perhaps appreciate more fully the advance we have really 
made during the present century. 

The first speculations on the nature and source of 
the phenomena of the universe, of which we have any 
knowledge, are those of the early Greek philosophers, 
such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, and Em- 
pedocles ; but as the more important of their teachings 
are embodied, with some approach to system and with 
much acuteness of reasoning, in the great poem of the 
Latin author Lucretius, "On the Nature of Things," 
it will be sufficient to give a sketch of his main conclu- 
sions, making use of the excellent prose translation by 
Mr. H. A. J. Munro, of Trinity College, Cambridge. 

5 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Lucretius had a very clear idea of the indestructibility 
of matter. He argues that things cannot have come 
out of nothing, and he says : " A thing never returns to 
nothing, but all things, after disruption, go back into 
the first bodies of matter." He then argues that, as the 
actual processes of growth, decay, and other natural 
changes are imperceptible to us, therefore "Nature 
works by unseen bodies." He justly claims great im- 
portance for the demonstration of the fact that in all 
matter whatever, however solid and hard it may be, 
there are vacancies, or, as he expresses it, "Mixed up 
in all things there is void or empty space." He thus 
anticipated the modern doctrine that the molecules of 
matter do not come into actual contact. He then de- 
fines atoms thus : " First bodies are solid and without 
void;" and as nothing can be produced from nothing, 
he concludes that these first bodies (atoms or molecules) 
must be everlasting, and that they supply matter for the 
reproduction of all things. 

He then goes on to prove that these " first beginnings 
are of solid singleness, not formed of parts, but strong 
in everlasting singleness." He further proves that 
these "first beginnings" (atoms) cannot be infinitely 
small, and also that the universe cannot be limited — 
that it is infinite. He thus anticipated the main ideas 
as to atoms and the universe which have been held by 
most materialistic thinkers down to our own times. 

Lucretius was an absolute materialist, for though he 
did not deny the existence of the gods he refused them 
any share in the construction of the universe, which, 
he again and again urges, arose by chance, after in- 
finite time, by the random motions and collisions and 
entanglements of the infinity of atoms. He assumes 
some forces analogous to gravitation and the molecular 
motions of gases in the following passage: "For the 
first beginnings of things move first of themselves ; next 

6 



EVOLUTION 

these bodies which form a small aggregate and come 
nearest, so to say, to the powers of the first beginnings 
are impelled and set in movement by the unseen strokes 
of these first bodies, and they next in turn stir up other 
bodies which are a little larger." 

He also anticipated Galileo as to the equal speed of 
all falling bodies when not checked by the air in the fol- 
lowing precise statement: "For whenever bodies fall 
through water and thin air they must quicken their de- 
scents in proportion to their weights, because the body 
of water and subtle nature of air cannot retard every- 
thing to an equal degree ; on the other hand, empty void 
cannot offer resistance to anything in any direction at 
any time, but must continually give way; and for this 
reason all things must be moved and borne along with 
equal velocity, though of unequal weights, through the 
unresisting void." 

This is a wonderfully accurate general statement of 
the equal rate of motion of all kinds of matter under the 
same forces; and when we consider that there is no in- 
dication of any experimental basis for this conclusion, 
and that nothing equivalent to our sciences of physics 
or chemistry existed, we are amazed at the general cor- 
rectness of many of his views, derived solely by a process 
of reasoning from the most obvious phenomena of nature. 
He argues that, given infinite matter and space and in- 
herent motion, "things must go on and be completed," 
and his general conclusion is thus expressed: "If you 
will apprehend and keep in mind these things, nature, 
free at once and rid of her haughty lords, is seen to do 
all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling 
of the gods." 

It is when he attempts to deal with the origin of living 
organisms that the absence of all knowledge of chem- 
istry, physiology, and histology renders his task im- 
possible and leads him into what seem to us the wildest 

7 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

absurdities. He has an elaborate but very unconvinc- 
ing argument that sensation can arise out of atoms which 
have no sensation ; and, taking the appearance of worms, 
etc., in the earth and in putrid matter as a proof that 
they are still actually produced de novo in it, he argues 
that at some remote epoch the now worn-out earth was 
more fertile, and produced in like manner all kinds of 
animals. The first human infants he supposes to have 
been formed at some very remote time in the manner fol- 
lowing: "For much heat and moisture would then 
abound in the fields; and therefore wherever a suitable 
spot offered wombs would grow, attached to the earth 
by roots; and when the warmth of the infants, flying 
the wet and craving the air, had opened these in the ful- 
ness of time, nature would turn to that spot the pores of 
the earth and constrain it to yield from its opened veins 
a liquid most like to milk. To the children the earth 
would furnish food, the heat raiment, the grass a bed 
rich in abundance of soft down. . . . Wherefore, again 
and again I say, the earth, with good title, has gotten 
and keeps the name of mother, since she of herself gave 
birth to mankind, and at a time nearly fixed shed forth 
every beast that ranges wildly over the great mountains, 
and at the same time the fowls of the air with all their 
varied shapes." 

The fact that this mode of origin commended itself to 
one of the brightest intellects of the first century B.C., 
enlightened by the best thought of the Grecian philos- 
ophers, may enable us the better to appreciate the im- 
mense advance made by modern evolutionists. 

THE FIRST REAL STEPS TOWARDS EVOLUTION 

We have now a great blank of fifteen centuries — the 
dark ages of human progress — after which the era of 
observation and experiment began, and for the first time 

8 



EVOLUTION 

men really set themselves to study nature, thus laying 
the foundation for all the great theoretical advances of 
our time. As leading to the next great step in theories 
of evolution, we must note the life-long observations by 
Tycho Brahe of the apparent motions of the planets; 
the grand discovery of Kepler that all these apparently 
erratic motions were due to their revolution round the 
sun in elliptic orbits, with a fixed relation between their 
distance from the sun and their periods of revolution ; 
and Newton's epoch-making theory of universal gravi- 
tation by which all these facts and many others since 
discovered were harmonized and explained. 

But all this implied no law of development, and it was 
long thought that the solar system was fixed and un- 
changeable — that some altogether unknown or miracu- 
lous agenc}^ must have set it going, and that it had in 
itself no principle of change or decay, but might con- 
tinue as it now is to all eternity. It was at the very end 
of the eighteenth century that Laplace announced his 
"Nebular Hypothesis," the first attempt ever made to 
explain the origin of the solar system under the influ- 
ence of the known laws of motion, gravitation, and heat, 
acting upon an altogether different antecedent condition 
of things — a true process of evolution. 

Laplace supposed that the whole matter of the solar 
system was once in a condition of vapor, and that it 
formed an enormous nebulous mass many times larger 
than the then known dimensions of the planetary sphere. 
He showed how, under the influence of gravitation, this 
nebula would condense, and that such irregularities of 
motion and density as would be sure to exist would lead 
to rotation of the mass. Under the law of gravitation 
this would lead to outer rings being left behind by the 
contraction of the central mass, which rings would at a 
later period become drawn together at some point of in- 
itial greater density and thus form planets. The whole 

Q 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

process is admitted to be mathematically demonstrable, 
given the initial conditions; but recent extensions of 
our knowledge of the interplanetary and interstellar 
spaces have shown that the supposed void is really full 
of invisible solid matter, ranging from the bulk of the 
smaller planets down to the finest dust, and it is very 
difficult to imagine any possible causes which would 
keep all the solid matter of the system in a state of vapor, 
when subject, on the confines of the mass, to the cold 
of interstellar space. The antecedent condition of our 
system is now thought to have been either wholly or 
partially meteoritic, but in either case we have a gen- 
uine theory of its evolution which has now been so ex- 
tended as to include the appearance of comets and me- 
teors, of nebulae, and star clusters, of temporary, peri- 
odic, and colored stars, and many other phenomena of 
the stellar universe. It is no objection to these grand 
theories to urge that they do not explain the origin of 
the matter of the universe, either what it is or how it 
came to be where we now find it. We can only take one 
step at a time, and even if in these greater problems any 
further advance should be as yet denied us, it is still a 
great thing to have been able to take even one secure 
step into the vast and mysterious depths of the inter- 
stellar spaces. 

EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH'S CRUST 

Although Pythagoras (500 B. C.) believed that sea and 
land must often have changed places, and a few other ob- 
servers at different epochs came to the same conclusion, 
yet, till quite recent times, the earth was generally sup- 
posed to have been always very much as it is now ; peo- 
ple spoke of "the eternal hills" ; and the great mountain 
ranges, the mighty ravines and precipices, as well as 
the deep seas and oceans, were believed to be the direct 
work of the Creator. 

10 



EVOLUTION 

It was only in the latter half of the eighteenth century 
that a few observers began to see the importance of study- 
ing the nature of the earth's crust, so far as it could be 
reached in ravines, quarries, and mines ; and one of the 
most earnest of these students, Dr. Hutton, of Edinburgh, 
after more than thirty years of travel and study, pub- 
lished his great work, The Theory of the Earth, which 
must be considered to be the starting - point of modern 
geology. He maintained that it was only by observing 
causes now in action that we can explain the phenomena 
presented by the stratified and igneous rocks ; he showed 
that the former must have been laid down by water, and 
that the larger part of them, containing as they do ma- 
rine shells and other fossils, must have been deposited 
on the sea-bottom. He showed how rain and rivers, 
frost and snow, wind and heat disintegrated the hardest 
rocks and would in time excavate the deepest valleys; 
while earthquakes, however small an elevation any one 
of them might produce, would in time raise the sea- 
bottom sufficiently high to form, when denuded, moun- 
tain ranges, plains, and valleys like those we now see 
everywhere upon the earth's surface. He also showed 
that the most ancient stratified rocks, those that lie at the 
very base of the series, presented every indication of hav- 
ing been formed in exactly the same way as the most 
recent ones. Hence he stated a conclusion which ex- 
cited a stonn of opposition, in these words : " In the 
economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning, 
no prospect of an end." This was thought to imply a 
denial of creation, and was quite sufficient at that period 
to prevent the work of any man of science from being 
judged impartially. 

But although Playfair and a few others upheld Hut- 
ton's views, they were too novel to receive much support 
by his contemporaries, and this was especially the case 
as regards the slow and continuous action of existing 

II 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

causes being sufficient to account for all the known phe- 
nomena presented by the crust of the earth. Hence the 
belief in catastrophes and cataclysms — in great con- 
vulsions tearing mountains asunder, and vast floods 
sweeping over whole continents — continued to prevail, 
till finally banished by the genius and perseverance of 
one man, Sir Charles Lyell. His Principles of Geology 
was first published in 1830, and successive editions, re- 
vised and often greatly extended, continued to appear 
till the author's death, forty-five years later. As this 
work affords a fine example of the application of the 
principles of evolution to the later phases of the earth's 
history, and as it not only revolutionized scientific opin- 
ion in its own domain, but prepared the way for the ac- 
ceptance of the still more novel and startling application 
of the same principles to the entire organic world, it will 
be necessary to show what opinions prevailed at the time 
it first appeared in order that we may understand how 
great was the change it effected. 

In the earlier years of the nineteenth century the 
standard geological work, both in Great Britain and on 
the Continent, was Cuvier's Essay on the Theory of the 
Earth. In 1827 a fifth edition of the English translation 
appeared, and there was a German translation so late as 
1830 — sufficient proofs of its wide popularity. Yet this 
work abounds in statements which are positively lu- 
dicrous to any one conversant with modern geology. It 
never appeals to known causes, but again and again as- 
sumes forces to be at work for which no evidence is ad- 
duced and which are totally at variance with what we see 
in the world to-day. A few examples justifying these 
statements must be here given. Cuvier shows that he 
was acquainted with the theory of modern causes, but 
he altogether rejects it, saying that " the march of nature 
is changed, and none of the agents she now employs 
would have been sufficient for the production of her 

12 



EVOLUTION 

ancient works." He adduces " the primitive mountains " 
whose "sharp and bristling ridges and peaks are indi- 
cations of the violent manner in which they have been 
elevated/' He allows that atmospheric agencies may 
form sea-cliffs, alluvial deposits, and taluses of loose mat- 
ter at the foot of the precipices, but he adds : " These are 
but limited effects to which vegetation in general puts a 
stop, and which, besides, presuppose the existence of 
mountains, valleys, and plains — in short, all the in- 
equalities of the globe — and which, therefore, cannot 
have given rise to those inequalities." He contrasts the 
calm and peaceful aspect of the surface of the earth with 
the appearances discovered when we examine its interior. 
Here, in the raised beds of shells, the fractured rocks, 
the inclined or even vertical stratification, he finds abun- 
dant proofs " that the surface of the globe has been broken 
up by revolutions and catastrophes." 

He also refers to the numerous large blocks of the 
primitive rocks scattered over the surface of secondary 
formations, and separated by deep valleys or even by arms 
of the sea from the peaks or ridges from which they must 
have been derived, as further proofs of catastrophes; 
for, it is argued, they must have been either ejected by 
volcanic eruptions or carried by waters, which, in either 
case, " must have exceeded in violence anything we can 
imagine at the present day," and he therefore concludes 
that "it is in vain we search among the powers which 
now act upon the surface of the earth for causes suf- 
ficient to produce the revolutions and catastrophes, the 
traces of which are exhibited in its crust." He is quite 
confident that all these changes go on rapidly, periods 
of catastrophe alternating with periods of repose. The 
present surface of the earth he holds to be quite recent, 
and he maintains "that, if anything in geology be es- 
tablished, it is that the surface of our globe has under- 
gone a great and sudden revolution, the date of which 

13 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

cannot be referred to a much earlier period than five 
or six thousand years ago; that this revolution over- 
whelmed and caused to disappear the countries which 
were previously inhabited by man, and the species of 
animals now best known; that, on the other hand, it 
laid dry the bottom of the last sea, and formed of it the 
countries which are at the present day inhabited." And 
he further declares that "this event has been sudden, 
instantaneous, without any gradation; and what is so 
clearly demonstrated with respect to this last catastro- 
phe is not less so with reference to those which pre- 
ceded it." 

The method followed by Lyell was the very reverse of 
that of Cuvier. Instead of assuming hastily that mod- 
ern causes were totally inadequate, and appealing con- 
stantly to purely imaginary and often inconceivable 
catastrophes, Lyell investigated these causes with pains- 
taking accuracy, apptying the tests of survey and time 
measurement, so as in many cases to prove that, given 
moderately long periods of time — not a few thousands 
only, but hundreds of thousands of years — they were 
fully adequate to explain the phenomena. He also 
showed that the imaginary causes of Cuvier would not 
explain the facts, for that everywhere in the crust of the 
earth we found conclusive proofs of very slow continuous 
changes exactly analogous to what now occur, never of 
great convulsions, except quite locally, as we have them 
now. He showed that modern volcanoes had poured 
out vast masses of melted rock during a single eruption, 
covering areas as extensive as those which any ancient 
volcano could be proved to have ejected in an equally 
short period; that strata were now in process of for- 
mation comparable in extent and thickness with any an- 
cient strata ; that organic remains are being preserved in 
them just as in the older rocks; that the land is almost 
everywhere rising or sinking as of old ; that valleys are 

14 



EVOLUTION 

being excavated and plateaus or mountains upheaved; 
that earthquake shocks are producing faults beneath 
the surface; that vegetation is still preparing future 
coal beds ; that limestones, clays, sandstones, metamor- 
phic and igneous rocks are all still being formed; and 
that, given time, and the intermittent or continuous 
action of the causes we can now trace in operation, and 
all the varied features of the earth's surface, as well as 
all the contortions and fractures which we discover in 
its crust, and every other phenomenon supposed to ne- 
cessitate catastrophes and cataclysms will be again 
produced. 

In the massive volumes of the later editions of the 
Principles of Geology all these points are discussed and 
illustrated with such a wealth of facts and such cogent 
yet cautious reasoning as have carried conviction to all 
modern students. It affords us perhaps the very best 
proof yet given of evolution in one department of the 
universe — that of the surface and the crust of the earth we 
inhabit. Not only have all the chief modifications dur- 
ing an almost unimaginable period of time been clearly 
depicted, but they have in almost every case been shown 
to be the inevitable results of real and comparatively well- 
known causes, such as we now see at work around us. 

The grand generalizations of Lyell have been strength- 
ened since his death by more complete investigations of 
certain phenomena and their causes than were possible 
in his day ; while the only objections to them seem to be 
founded, to some extent, upon a misconception. He 
has been termed a "Uniformitarian," and it is alleged 
that it is unphilosophical to take the limited range of 
causes we now see in action, as a measure of those which 
have acted during all past geological time. But neither 
Lyell nor his followers make any such assumption. 
They merely say, we do not find any proof of greater 
or more violent causes in action in past times, and we do 

15 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

find many indications that the great natural forces then 
in action — seas and rivers, sun and cloud, rain and hail, 
frost and snow, as well as the very texture and constitu- 
ents of the older rocks, and the mode in which the organ- 
isms of each age are preserved in them, must have been 
in their general nature and magnitude very much as they 
are now. Other objections, such as that the internal 
forces were greater when the earth was hotter, and that 
tidal effects must have been more powerful when the moon 
was nearer the earth, are altogether beside the question 
until we can obtain more definite measures of past time 
than we now possess in reference to both geological and 
cosmical phenomena. It may well be that the physical 
changes above referred to have been so slow that they 
would have produced no perceptibly increased effect at 
the epoch of the early stratified rocks. Lyell's doctrine 
is simply that of real against imaginary causes, and he 
only denies catastrophes and more violent agencies in 
early times, because there is no clear evidence of their 
actual existence, and also because known causes are 
quite competent to explain all geological phenomena. 
It must be remembered, too, that uniformitarians have 
never limited the natural forces of past geological pe- 
riods to the precise limits of which we have had experience 
during the historical period. What they maintain is, 
that forces of the same nature and of the same order of 
magnitude are adequate to have brought about the evo- 
lution of the crust of the earth as we now find it. 



ORGANIC EVOLUTION, ITS LAWS AND CAUSES 

We now come to that branch of the subject which is 
the most important and distinctive of our age, and which, 
in popular estimation, alone constitutes evolution — the 
mode of origin of the innumerable species of animal and 

16 



EVOLUTION 

plant life which now exist or have ever existed upon the 
earth. 

The origin of the different forms of life has till quite 
recent times been looked upon as an almost insoluble 
problem, although a few advanced thinkers, even in the 
eighteenth century, perceived that it was probably the 
result of some natural process of modification or evolu- 
tion ; but no force or law had been set forth and estab- 
lished in any way adequate to produce it until the pub- 
lication of Darwin's Origin of Species, in 1859. In the 
later editions of that work, Darwin has given a historical 
sketch of the progress of opinion on the subject. I shall, 
therefore, now only notice a few great writers which he 
has not referred to. 

We have seen what an impossible and even ludicrous 
explanation had to be given by Lucretius ; and from his 
day down to the middle of the eighteenth century no ad- 
vance had been made. Either the problem was not re- 
ferred to at all, or the theological doctrine of a special 
creation was held to be the only possible one. But in the 
middle of the eighteenth century the great French nat- 
uralist, Buff on, published his very important work, His- 
toire Naturelle, in fifteen volumes (1749-1767), in which, 
besides describing the characters and habits of all the 
animals then known, he introduced much philosophical 
and speculative thought, which would probably have 
been carried much further had he not felt obliged to con- 
form to the religious prejudices of the age. We are in- 
debted to Mr. Samuel Butler for having brought together 
all the important passages of Buffon's voluminous and 
now little -read works bearing upon the question of 
evolution, and it is from his volume that I quote. 

Buffon lays stress on the great resemblance of all 

mammalia in internal structure, showing that the most 

unlike creatures may be really alike structurally. He 

says : " The horse, for example — what can at first sight 

B 17 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

seem more unlike mankind? Yet when we compare 
man and horse, point by point and detail by detail, our 
wonder is excited rather by the resemblances than by 
the differences between them." He then shows that all 
the parts of the skeleton agree, and that it is only in pro- 
portions, the increase of some bones and the suppression 
of others, that they differ, adding : " If we regard the 
matter thus, not only the ass and the horse, but even 
man himself, the apes, etc. , might be regarded as forming 
members of one and the same family." Then, after a 
few more illustrations, he remarks : " If we once admit 
that there are families of plants and animals, so that the 
ass may be of the family of the horse, and that the one 
may only differ from the other by degeneration from a 
common ancestor, we might be driven to admit that the 
ape is of the family of man, that he is but a degenerate 
man, and that he and man have had a common ancestor. 
... If it were once shown that we had right grounds 
for establishing these families, if the point were once 
gained that among plants and animals there have been 
even a single species which had been produced in the 
course of direct descent from another species, then there 
is no further limit to be set to the power of nature, and 
we should not be wrong in supposing that with sufficient 
time she could have evolved all other organized forms 
from one primordial type." 

This indicates clearly enough his own opinion, but to 
save himself from the ecclesiastical authorities he at 
once adds this saving clause: "But no! It is certain, 
from revelation, that all animals have alike been favored 
with the grace of an act of direct creation, and that the 
first pair of every species issued full formed from the 
hands of the Creator." 

Such examples of disarming religious prejudice are 
frequent, but he continually recurs to statements as to 
mutability which neutralize them. Here, for example, 

18 



EVOLUTION 

is a broad claim for nature as opposed to creation. He 
has been showing how variable are many animals, and 
how changes of food, climate, and general surroundings 
influence both their forms and their habits ; and then he 
exclaims : 

"What cannot nature effect with such means at her 
disposal? She can do all except either create matter or 
destroy it. These two extremes of power the Deity has 
reserved for Himself only; creation and destruction are 
the action of His omnipotence. To alter and undo, to 
develop and renew — these are powers which He has 
handed over to the charge of nature." 

Here we have a claim for the power of nature in the 
modification of species which fully comes up to the re- 
quirements of the most advanced evolutionist. It is re- 
markable, too, how clearly he perceived the great factors 
so important for the evolution of organisms, rapid multi- 
plication, great variability, and the struggle for exist- 
ence. Thus he remarks : " It may be said that the 
movement of nature turns upon two immovable pivots 
— one, the illimitable fecundity which she has given to 
all species ; the other, the innumerable difficulties which 
reduce the results of that fecundity and leave throughout 
time nearly the same quantity of individuals in every 
species." Here the term " difficulties " corresponds to the 
"positive checks" of Malthus, and to the "struggle for 
existence " of Darwin ; and he again and again refers to 
variability — as when he says : " Hence, when by some 
chance, common enough with nature, a variation or 
special feature makes its appearance, man has tried to 
perpetuate it by uniting together the individuals in which 
it has appeared." 

As Buffon thus clearly understood artificial selection, 
thoroughly appreciated the rapid increase of all organ- 
isms, and equally well saw that their inordinate increase 
was wholly neutralized through such destructive agen- 

19 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

cies as hunger, disease, and enemies, and as, at the same 
time, he had such unbounded faith in the power of nature 
to modify animal and vegetable forms, we feel assured 
that this great writer and original thinker only needed 
freedom to pursue this train of thought a little further and 
he would certainly have anticipated Darwin's great dis- 
covery of natural selection by a whole century. Even 
as it is we must class him as one of the great pioneers of 
organic evolution. 

The next distinct step towards a theory of organic evo- 
lution was made by the poet Goethe at the very end of 
the eighteenth century, in his views of the metamorphosis 
of plants. He pointed out the successive modifications 
of the leaf which produced all the other essential parts of 
the higher plants — the simple cotyledons or seed leaves 
became modified into the variously formed leaves of the 
fully grown plants ; these again were successively mod- 
ified into the calyx, corolla, stamens, and ovary of the 
flower. He supposed this to be due to the increased re- 
finement of the sap under the influence of light and air, 
and to indicate the steps by which the various parts of 
the flower had been developed. It was, therefore, a 
theory of evolution ; but it was very unsatisfactory, in- 
asmuch as it in no way accounted for the wonderful 
variety of the floral organs, or indicated any purpose 
served by the most prominent and conspicuous part of 
the flower, the highly colored and often strangely formed 
corolla. It was also erroneous in supposing that the 
corolla was a modified calyx, whereas it is now known 
to be a modification of the stamens. 

Next came the great work of Lamarck in the first dec- 
ade of the nineteenth century, in which he proposed a 
general system of evolution of the whole animal world. 
Hence he may be termed the first systematic evolution- 
ist. His system has been rather fully described by Ly- 
ell, who, in his Principles of Geology, devotes a whole 

20 



EVOLUTION 

chapter to a summary of his doctrines ; while Mr. Butler 
gives copious quotations in three chapters of his Evolu- 
tion Old and Neiv ; and any one who is not acquainted 
with the original work of Lamarck should read these two 
authors in order to understand how wide was his knowl- 
edge, how ingenious his explanations, and in how many 
important points he anticipated the views both of Lyell 
and Darwin. But he was half a century in advance of 
his age, and his only alleged causes of modification — 
changed conditions, use and disuse, habit and effort — 
were wholly insufficient to account for the vast range 
of the phenomena presented by the innumerable minute 
adaptations of living organisms to their conditions of 
life. He even imputed all the modifications of domes- 
tic animals to the changed conditions of food and hab- 
its to which they have been subjected by man, mak- 
ing no reference to the use of selection by breeders, in 
this respect falling short of his great predecessor, Buffon. 

The general laws which Lamarck deduces from his 
elaborate study of nature are these : 

"Firstly. That in every animal which has not passed 
its limit of development, the more frequent and sustained 
employment of any organ develops and aggrandizes it, 
giving it a power proportionate to the duration of its em- 
ployment, while the same organ, in default of constant 
use, becomes insensibly weakened and deteriorated, de- 
creasing imperceptibly in power until it finally disap- 
pears. 

" Secondly. That these gains or losses of organic de- 
velopment, due to use or disuse, are transmitted to off- 
spring, provided they have been common to both sexes, 
or to the animals from which the offspring have de- 
scended." 

The whole force of this argument depends upon the 
second clause — the inheritance of those individual modi- 
fications due to use and disuse. But no direct evidence 

21 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

of this has ever been found, while there is a good deal of 
evidence showing that it does not occur. Again, there 
are many structures which cannot have been produced 
by use, such, for example, as the feathers of the pea- 
cock's train, the poison in the serpent's fangs, the hard 
shells of nuts, the prickly covering of many fruits, the 
varied armor of the turtle, porcupine, crocodile, and 
many others. For these reasons Lamarck's views 
gained few converts; and although some of his argu- 
ments have been upheld in recent years, the fatal ob- 
jections to his general principle as a means of explaining 
the evolution of organic forms has never been overcome. 
Between the periods of Lamarck and Darwin many 
advances were made which clearly pointed to a general 
law of evolution in nature. Such were Sir William 
Grove's lectures on the "Correlation of the Plrysical 
Forces," in 1842; Helmholtz on the "Conservation of 
Energy," in 1847; and Herbert Spencer's essay on 
" The Development Hypothesis," in 1852. This latter 
work was a complete and almost unanswerable argu- 
ment for a natural process of continuous evolution of 
the whole visible universe, including organic nature, 
man, and social phenomena. It is further extended in 
the later editions of the author's First Principles, which, 
as a coherent exposition of philosophy, co-ordinating and 
explaining all human knowledge of the universe into 
one great system of evolution everywhere conforming to 
the same general principles, must be held to be one of 
the greatest intellectual achievements of the nineteenth 
century. It left, however, the exact method of evolu- 
tion of organisms untouched, and thus failed to ac- 
count for those complex adaptations and appearances 
of design in the various species of animals and plants 
which have always been the stronghold of those who 
advocated special creation. This difficulty was met by 
Darwin's theory of The Origin of Species by Means of 

22 



EVOLUTION 

Natural Selection, published in 1859, and the series of 
works that succeeded it; and to a brief sketch of this 
theory the remainder of our space must be devoted. 

THE THEORY OF "NATURAL SELECTION" 

Although, as we have seen, a succession of great 
writers and thinkers had for more than half a century- 
shown the necessity for some process of evolution as the 
only rational or intelligible mode of origin of existing 
species of animals and plants, as well as of the whole 
physical universe, yet these views were by no means 
generally accepted by the educated classes, while few 
bodies of students were less influenced by them than 
zoologists and botanists, generally known as naturalists. 

Now, Darwin wrote especially for these classes, and 
no one knew better than he did their great prejudice on 
this matter. Not only had such men as Sir Charles 
Lyell and Sir John Herschell expressed themselves 
strongly against all theories of the transmutation of spe- 
cies, but the universal contempt and indignation of nat- 
uralists as well as theologians against The Vestiges of 
Creation, published anonymously a few years earlier, 
and giving a most temperate and even religious expo- 
sition of the general arguments for the universality of 
evolution, showed what any one might expect who ad- 
vocated and attempted to demonstrate a similar theory. 
This accounts for Darwin writing to Sir Joseph Hooker, 
in 1844, of his being " almost convinced that species are 
not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable," and 
again, in 1845, to the Rev. L. Blomefield, that he now 
saw the way in which new varieties become exquisitely 
adapted to the external conditions of life and to other 
surrounding beings, and he adds : " I am a bold man to 
lay myself open to being thought a complete fool, and a 
most deliberate one." It is only by a consideration of 

*3 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the frame of mind of even advanced thinkers at the time 
Darwin was preparing his work, and remembering how 
small was the effect which had been produced by Buffon, 
Goethe, Lamarck, the author of Vestiges of Creation, and 
the earlier writings of Herbert Spencer, that we can ade- 
quately realize the marvellous work that he accomplished. 
Let us now briefly consider the essential nature of this 
new theory, which in a few brief years became the es- 
tablished belief of the great majority of the students of 
nature, and which also gave a new interest in nature to 
the whole thinking world. 

The theory of natural selection is founded upon a few 
groups of thoroughly ascertained and universally ad- 
mitted facts, with the direct and necessary results of 
those facts. 

The first group of facts consists of the great powers 
of increase of all organisms and the circumstance that, 
notwithstanding this great yearly increase, the actual 
population of each species remains stationary, there being 
no permanent increase. Now, these two facts were recog- 
nized by Buffon, but though, of course, known to all 
subsequent writers, were fully appreciated or thought 
out to their logical results by none of them. Lamarck, 
so far as I can ascertain, took no notice of them what- 
ever. Darwin has given illustrations of these facts in 
Chapter IV. of the Origin of Species, and I have added 
others in the second chapter of my Darivinism. That 
the population of each species remains stationary, with, 
of course, considerable fluctuations, is both a matter of 
observation and of reasoning. The powers of increase 
of all creatures are so great that if there is in any country 
room and food for a larger number of any species they 
will be produced in a year or two. It is impossible, there- 
fore, to believe that, in a state of nature, where all kinds 
of animals and plants have lived together as they best 
could for thousands of years, there can be any important 

24 



EVOLUTION 

difference in their numbers from year to year or from 
century to century. 

Now, it is as a consequence of these two indisputable 
facts that the struggle for existence necessarily results. 
For if every year each pair of animals or each plant pro- 
duces only ten young animals or plants, and this is very 
far below the average, and if the adult life of these is 
taken at ten years, again below the average of the higher 
plants and animals, then, unless some of the parents die, 
the whole of the offspring must die off every year ; or, in 
other words, only as many young can survive as are 
necessary to replace the old ones that die. Hence the 
deaths must always (on the average and in the long run) 
equal the births. This terrible yearly destruction is an 
absolutely certain fact, as well as an inevitable result of 
the two preceding facts, and it is said to be due to the 
struggle for existence. This struggle is manifold in its 
nature. Individuals of the same species struggle to- 
gether for food, for light, for moisture; they struggle 
also against other species having the same wants ; they 
struggle against every kind of enemy, from parasitic 
worms and insects up to carnivorous animals ; and there 
is a continual struggle with the forces of nature — frosts, 
rains, droughts, floods, and tempests. 

These varied causes of destruction may be seen con- 
stantly at work by any one who looks for them. They 
act from the moment of birth, being more especially de- 
structive to the young ; and, as only one in ten or fifty 
or a thousand (according to the rate of increase of the 
particular species) can possibly come to the full breeding 
age, we feel compelled to ask ourselves : What determines 
the nine or the forty-nine or the nine hundred and ninety- 
nine, as the case may be, which die, and the one which 
survives? Darwin calls this process of extermination 
one of " natural selection " — that is, by this process nat- 
ure weeds out the weak, the unhealthy, the unadapted, 

25 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the imperfect in any way. Of course, what may be called 
chance or accident produces many deaths of individuals 
otherwise well fitted to live, but if we think of the process 
going on day by day and year by year till only one in a 
hundred of those born in a given area are left alive, it is 
impossible to suppose that the one which has passed 
through all the dangers and risks which have been fatal 
to, say, his ninety -nine relations was not, in all the 
faculties and qualities essential to the continuance of 
the race, decidedly better organized than the bulk of 
those which succumbed. Herbert Spencer calls the 
process the "survival of the fittest/' and though the 
term may not be strictly accurate in the case of any 
one species in any one year, yet when we consider that 
the struggle is going on every year, during the whole 
duration of each species, we cannot doubt that, on the 
whole, and in the long run, those which survive are 
among the fittest. The struggle is so severe, so inces- 
sant, that the smallest defect in any sense organ, any 
physical weakness, any imperfection in constitution, will 
almost certainly, at one time or another, be fatal. 

This continual weeding out of the less fit, in every 
generation, and with exceptional severity in recurring 
adverse seasons, will produce two distinct effects, which 
require to be clearly distinguished. The first is the pres- 
ervation of each species in the highest state of adaptation 
to the conditions of its existence ; and, therefore, so long 
as these conditions remained unchanged, the effect of nat- 
ural selection is to keep each well-adapted species also 
unchanged. The second effect is produced whenever 
the conditions vary, when, taking advantage of the vari- 
ations continually occurring in all well-adapted and 
therefore populous species, the same process will slowly 
but surely bring about complete adaptation to the new 
conditions. And here another fact — the normal varia- 
bility of all populous or dominant species, which is seldom 

26 



EVOLUTION 

realized except by those who have largely and minutely 
compared the individuals of many species in a state of 
nature — comes into play. There are some writers who 
admit all the preceding facts and reasoning, so far as 
the action of natural selection in weeding out the unfit 
and thus keeping every species in the highest state of 
efficiency is concerned, but who deny that it can modify 
them in such a way as to adapt them to new conditions, 
because they allege that "the right variations will not 
always occur at the right time." This seems a strong 
and real objection to many of their readers, but to those 
who have studied the variability of species in nature, it 
is a mere verbal difficulty dependent on ignorance of the 
actual facts. A brief statement of the facts must there- 
fore be given. 

Of late years, and chiefly since Darwin's works were 
written, the variability of animals and plants in a state of 
nature has been carefully studied, by actual comparison 
and measurement of scores, hundreds, and even thou- 
sands of individuals of many common, that is, abundant 
and widely distributed species ; and it is found that in 
almost every case they vary greatly, and, what is still 
more important, that every organ and every appendage 
varies independently and to a large amount. Some of 
the best known of these facts of variation are adduced 
in my Darwinism, and are illustrated by numerous 
diagrams, and much more extensive series have since 
been examined, always with the same general result. 
By large variability is meant a variation of from ten to 
twenty-five per cent, on each side of the mean size, this 
amount of variation occurring in at least five or ten per 
cent, of the whole number of individuals, and in every 
organ or part as yet examined, external or internal. 

Now, as the weeding-out process is so severe, only 
from one in ten to one in a hundred of those born surviv- 
ing to produce young, the above proportion of variations 

27 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

affords ample scope for the selection of any variation 
needed in order to modify the species so as to bring it into 
harmony with new or changing conditions. And this will 
be the more easy and certain if we consider how slowly 
land-surfaces and climates undergo permanent changes ; 
and these are certainly the kind of changes that initiate 
and compel alterations, first, perhaps, in the distribution, 
and afterwards in the structure and habits of species. 
It follows, therefore, as an absolutely necessary conclu- 
sion from the facts, if natural selection can and does 
keep each continually varying species in close adaptation 
to an unchanging environment, that it preserves the fixity 
of its mean or average condition, and almost every ob- 
jector admits this. Then, given a slowly changing en- 
vironment, the same power must inevitably bring about 
whatever corresponding change is needed for the well- 
being and permanent survival of the various species 
which are subjected to those changed conditions. 

1 shall not add here a further consideration of the ob- 
jections and difficulties alleged by critics of the theorj^. 
All of these have, I believe, been fully answered either by 
Darwin or rr^self, many of the most recent having been 
discussed in review articles. Suffice it to say here that 
this theory of natural selection — meaning the elimination 
of the least fit, and therefore the ultimate " survival of the 
fittest " — has furnished a rational and precise explana- 
tion of the means of adaptation of all existing organisms 
to their conditions, and therefore of their transformation 
from the series of distinct but allied species which occupied 
the earth at some preceding epoch. In this sense it has 
actually demonstrated the "origin of species," and, by 
carrying back this process step by step into earlier and 
earlier geological times, we are able mentally to follow 
out the evolution of all forms of life from one or a few 
primordial forms. Natural selection has thus supplied 
that motive power of change and adaptation that was 

28 



EVOLUTION 

wanting in all earlier attempts at explanation, and this 
has led to its very general acceptance both by naturalists 
and by the great majority of thinkers and men of science. 

The brief sketch now given of the progress of human 
thought on the questions of the fact and the mode of the 
evolution of the material universe indicates how great has 
been the progress during the nineteenth as compared 
with all preceding centuries. 

Although the philosophical writers of classical times 
obtained a few glimpses of the action of law in nature 
regulating its successive changes, nothing satisfactory 
could be effected till the actual facts had been better ascer- 
tained by the whole body of workers who, during the last 
five centuries, have penetrated ever more and more deeply 
into nature's mysteries and laws. By their labors we 
became possessed of such a body of carefully observed 
facts that, towards the end of the eighteenth century, 
such thinkers as Laplace and Hutton were enabled to 
give us the first rudiments of theories of evolution as 
applied to the solar system and the earth's crust, both 
of which have been greatly developed and rendered more 
secure during the century just passed away. 

In like manner Buff on and Goethe may be said to have 
started the idea of organic evolution, more systematically 
treated a little later by Lamarck, but still without any 
discovery of laws adequate to produce the results we see 
everywhere in nature. The subject then languished, 
till, after twenty years of observation and research, 
Charles Darwin produced a work which at once satisfied 
many thinkers that the long-desired clew had been dis- 
covered. Its acceptance by almost the whole scientific 
world soon followed : it threw new light on almost every 
branch of research, and it will probably take its place, 
in the opinion of future generations, as the crowning 
achievement of the nineteenth century. 

Alfred Russell Wallace. 



CHEMISTRY 



CHEMISTRY 



'"THE progress of the science of chemistry forms one 
phase of the progress of human thought. While at 
first mankind was contented to observe certain phenom- 
ena, and to utilize them for industrial purposes, if they 
were found suitable, " philosophers," as the thinking por- 
tion of our race loved to call themselves, have always at- 
tempted to assign some explanation for observed facts, 
and to group them into similars and dissimilars. It was 
for long imagined, following the doctrines of the Greeks 
and of their predecessors, that all matter consisted of four 
elements or principles, names which survive to this day 
in popular language. These were "fire," "air," "water," 
and "earth." It was not until the seventeenth century 
that Boyle in his Sceptical Chymist (1661) laid the founda- 
tions of the modern science, by pointing out that it was 
impossible to explain the existence of the fairly numerous 
chemical substances known in his day, or the changes 
which they can be made to undergo, by means of the 
ancient Greek hypotheses regarding the constitution of 
matter. He laid down the definition of the modern mean- 
ing of the word " element " ; he declined to accept the 
current view that the properties of matter could be modi- 
fied by its assimilating the qualities of fire, air, earth, 
or water, and he defined an element as the constituent of 
a compound body. The first problem, then, to be solved, 
was to determine which of the numerous forms of matter 
were to be regarded as elementary, and which are com- 
pound, or composed of two or more elements in a state of 
C 33 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

combination; and to produce such compounds by caus- 
ing the appropriate elements to unite with each other. 

One of the first objects to excite curiosity and interest 
was the air which surrounds us, and in which we live and 
move and have our being. It was, however, endowed 
with a semi - spiritual and scarcely corporeal nature 
in the ideas of our ancestors, for it does not affect the 
senses of sight, smell, or taste, and though it can be felt, 
yet it eludes our grasp. The word " gas/' moreover, was 
not invented until Van Helmont devised it to designate 
various kinds of "airs" which he had observed. The 
important part which gases play in the constitution of 
many chemical compounds was accordingly overlooked ; 
and, indeed, it appeared to be almost as striking a feat 
of necromancy to produce a quantity of a gas of great 
volume from a small pinch of solid powder as for a "Jinn " 
of enormous stature but of delicate texture to issue from 
a brass pot, as related in the Arabian Nights Enter- 
tainments. Gradually, however, it came to be recog- 
nized, not merely that gases have corporeal existence, 
but that they even possess weight. This, though fore- 
shadowed by Torricelli, Jean Rey, and others, was first 
clearly proved by Black, professor of chemistry in Edin- 
burgh, in 1752, through his masterly researches, as car- 
bonic acid. 

The ignorance of the material nature of gases and of 
their weight lies at the bottom of the " Phlogistic Theory," 
a theory devised by Stahl about the year 1690, to account 
for the phenomena of combustion and respiration and 
the recovery or " reduction " of metals from their " earths " 
by heating with charcoal or allied bodies. According 
to this inverted theory, a substance capable of burning 
was imagined to contain more or less phlogiston, a prin- 
ciple which it parted with on burning, leaving an earth 
deprived of phlogiston, or "dephlogisticated," behind if 
a metal. This earth, when heated with substances rich 

34 



CHEMISTRY 

in phlogiston, such as coal, wood, flour, and similar bod- 
ies, recovered the phlogiston, which it had lost on burn- 
ing, and, with the added phlogiston, its metallic char- 
acter. Other substances, such as phosphorus and sul- 
phur, gave solids or acid liquids, to which phlogiston was 
not so easy to add; but even they could be rephlogisti- 
cated. On this hypothesis, it was the earths, and such 
acid liquids as sulphuric or phosphoric acids, which were 
the elements; the metals and sulphur and phosphorus 
were their compounds with phlogiston. 

The discovery of oxj^gen by Priestley and by Scheele 
in 1774, and the explanation of its functions by Lavoisier 
during the following ten years, gave their true meaning 
to these phenomena. It was then recognized that com- 
bustion was union with oxygen; that an "earth" or 
" calx " was to be regarded as the compound of a metal 
with oxygen; that when a metal becomes tarnished, 
and converted into such an earthy powder, it is being oxi- 
dized; that this oxide, on ignition with charcoal or car- 
bon, or with compounds such as coal, flour, or wood, of 
which carbon is a constituent, gives up its oxygen to the 
carbon, forming an oxide of carbon, carbonic oxide on 
the one hand, or carbonic " acid " on the other, while the 
metal is reproduced in its "reguline" or metallic con- 
dition, and that the true elements are metals, carbon, 
sulphur, phosphorus, and similar bodies, and not the 
products of their oxidation. 

The discovery that air is in the main a mixture of nitro- 
gen, an inert gas, and oxygen, an active one, together 
with a small proportion of carbonic "acid" (or, as it is 
now termed, anhydride) — a discovery perfected by Ruth- 
erford, Black, and Cavendish — and that water is a com- 
pound with oxygen of hydrogen, previously known as 
inflammable air, by Cavendish and by Watt, finally 
overthrew the theory of phlogiston ; but at the beginning 
of this century it still lingered on, and was defended by 

35 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Priestley until his death in 1804. Such, in brief, was the 
condition of chemical thought in the year 1800. Scheele 
had died in 1786, at the early age of forty-four; Lavoi- 
sier was one of the victims of the French Revolution, 
having been guillotined in 1794; Cavendish had ceased 
to work at chemical problems, and was devoting his ex- 
traordinary abilities to physical problems of the highest 
importance, while living the life of an eccentric recluse, 
and Priestley, driven by religious persecution from Eng- 
land to the more tolerant shores of America, was enjoy- 
ing a peaceful old age, enlivened by occasional incur- 
sions into the region of sectarian controversy. 

The first striking discovery of our century was that of 
the compound nature of the alkalies and of the alkaline 
earths. This discovery was made by Humphry Davy. 
Born in Cornwall in 1778, he began the study of chem- 
istry, self-taught, in 1796; and in 1799 he became di- 
rector of the "Pneumatic Institution," an undertaking 
founded by Dr. Beddoes, at Bristol, for the purpose of ex- 
periments on the curative effects of gases in general. 
Here he at once made his mark by the discovery of the 
remarkable properties of "laughing gas," or nitrous 
oxide. At the same time he constructed a galvanic 
battery, and began to perform experiments with it in 
attempting to decompose chemical compounds by its 
means. In 1801 Davy was appointed professor of chem- 
istry at the Royal Institution, a society or club which 
had been founded a few years previously by Benjamin 
Thompson, Count Rumford, for the purpose of instruct- 
ing and amusing its members with recent discoveries 
in chemistry and natural philosoplry. In 1807 Davy 
applied his galvanic battery to the decomposition of 
damp caustic potash and soda, using platinum poles. 
He was rewarded by seeing globules of metal, resembling 
mercury in appearance, at the negative pole; and he 
subsequently proved that these globules, when burned, 

36 



CHEMISTRY 

reproduced the alkali from which they had been derived. 
They also combined with "oxymuriatic acid/' as chlo- 
rine (discovered by Scheele) was then termed, forming 
ordinary salt, if sodium be employed, and the analogous 
salt, "muriate of potash," if the allied metal, potassium, 
were subjected to combustion. By using mercury as 
the negative pole, and passing a current through a 
strong solution of the chloride of calcium, strontium, or 
barium, Davy succeeded in procuring mixtures with 
mercury or "amalgams" of their metals, to which he 
gave the names calcium, strontium, and barium. Dis- 
tillation removed most of the mercury, and the metal 
was left behind in a state of comparative purity. The 
alkali metals, potassium and sodium, were found to at- 
tack glass, liberating "the basis of the silex," to which 
the name silicon has since been given. 

Thus nearly the last of the " earths " had been decom- 
posed. It was proved that not merely were the " calces " 
of iron, copper, lead, and other well-known metals com- 
pounds of the respective metals with oxygen, but Davy 
showed that lime, and its allies, strontia and baryta, 
and even silica or flint, were to be regarded as oxides of 
elements of metallic appearance. To complete our re- 
view of this part of the subject, suffice it to say that 
aluminum, a metal now produced on an industrial scale, 
was prepared for the first time in 1827 by Wohler, pro- 
fessor of chemistry at Gottingen, by the action of po- 
tassium on its chloride, and alumina, the earthy basis of 
clay, was shown to be the oxide of the metal aluminum. 
Indeed, the preparation of this metal in quantity is now 
carried out at Schoffhausen-on-the-Rhine and at the Falls 
of Foyers, in Scotland, by electrolysis of the oxide dis- 
solved in melted cryolite, a mineral consisting of the 
fluorides of sodium and aluminum, by a method differing 
only in scale from that by means of which Davy isolated 
sodium and potassium in 1806. 

37 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

To Davy, too, belongs the merit of having dethroned 
oxygen from its central position among the elements. 
Lavoisier gave to this important gas the name " oxygen/' 
because he imagined it to be the constituent of all acids. 
He renamed the common compounds of oxygen in such 
a manner that the term oxygen was not even represented 
in the name — only inferred. Thus a " nitrate " is a com- 
pound of an oxide of nitrogen and an oxide of a metal ; 
a "sulphate/' of the oxide of a metal with one of the ox- 
ides of sulphur, and so on. Davy, by discovering the 
elementary nature of chlorine, showed, first, that it is not 
an oxide of hydrochloric acid (or muriatic acid as it was 
then called) ; and, second, that the latter acid is the com- 
pound of the element chlorine with hydrogen. This he 
did by passing chlorine over white-hot carbon — a sub- 
stance eminently suited to deprive oxy - compounds 
of their oxj^gen — and proving that no oxide of carbon 
is thereby produced; by acting on certain chlorides, 
such as those of tin or phosphorus with ammonia, 
and showing that no oxide of tin or phosphorus is 
formed; and, lastly, by decomposing "muriatic acid 
gas" (gaseous hydrogen chloride) with sodium, and 
showing that the only product besides common salt is 
hydrogen. Instead, therefore, of the former theory that 
a chloride was a compound of the unknown basis of oxy- 
muriatic acid with oxygen and the oxide of a metal, he 
introduced the simpler and correct view that a chloride 
is merely a compound of the element chlorine with a 
metal. In 1813 he established the similar nature of 
fluorine, pointing out that on the analogy of the chlo- 
rides it was a fair deduction that the fluorides are com- 
pounds of an undiscovered element, fluorine, with metals ; 
and that hydrofluoric acid is the true analogue of hydro- 
chloric acid. The truth of this forecast has been estab- 
lished of recent years by Henri Moissan, who isolated 
gaseous fluorine by subjecting a mixture of hydrofluoric 

38 



CHEMISTRY 

acid and hydrogen potassium fluoride contained in a 
platinum U tube to the action of a powerful electric cur- 
rent. He has recently found that the tube may be equal- 
ly well constructed of copper; and this may soon lead 
to the industrial application of the process. The diffi- 
culty of isolating fluorine is due to its extraordinary 
chemical energy; for there are few substances, element- 
ary or compound, which resist the action of this pale yel- 
low, suffocating gas. In 1811 iodine, separated by 
Courtois from the ashes of sea-plants, was shown by 
Davy to be an element analogous to chlorine. Gay-Lus- 
sac subsequently investigated it and prepared many of 
its compounds; and in 1826 the last of these elements, 
bromine, was discovered in the mother-liquor of sea-salt by 
Balard. The elements of this group have been termed 
"halogens," or "salt producers." 

While Davy was pouring his researches into the as- 
tonished ears of the scientific and dilettante world, John 
Dalton, a Manchester school-master, conceived a theory 
that has proved of the utmost service to the science of 
chemistry, and which bids fair to outlast our day. It had 
been noticed by Wenzel, by Richter, by Wollaston, and 
by Cavendish, towards the end of the last century, that 
the same compounds contain the same constituents in 
the same proportions, or, as the phrase runs, "possess 
constant composition." Wollaston, indeed, had gone 
one step farther, and had shown that when the vegetable 
acid, oxalic acid, is combined with potash, it forms two 
compounds, in one of which the acid is contained in twice 
as great an amount relatively to the potash as in the 
other. The names monoxalate and binoxalate of potash 
were applied to these compounds, to indicate the respective 
proportions of the ingredients. Dalton conceived the 
happy idea that by applying the ancient Greek concep- 
tion of atoms to such facts the relative weights of the 
atoms could be determined. Illustrating his views with 

39 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the two compounds of carbon with hydrogen, marsh gas 
and olefiant gas, and with the two acids of carbon, car- 
bonic oxide, carbonic "acid, "he regarded the former as a 
compound of one atom of carbon and one of hydrogen, and 
the second as a compound of one atom of carbon and 
two of hydrogen, and similarly for the two oxides of 
carbon. Knowing the relative weights in which these 
elements enter into combination, we can deduce the rel- 
ative weights of the atoms. Placing the relative weight 
of an atom of hydrogen equal to unity, we have : 



Marsh Olefiant 

Gas Gas 

Carbon ... 6 ... 6 

Hydrogen . . I . . . 2 



Carbon . 


Carbonic 
Oxide 

. . 5 • 


Carbonic 
Acid 

. 6 


Oxygen . 


. . 8 . 


. 16 



Thus the first compound, marsh gas, was regarded by 
Dalton as composed of an atom of carbon in union with 
an atom of hydrogen ; or, to reproduce his symbols, as 
H O ; while the second, olefiant gas, on this hypothesis, 
was a compound of two atoms of hydrogen with one of 
carbon, or O # O. Similarly the symbols # O, and 
O # O were given to the two compounds of carbon with 
oxygen. So water was assigned the symbol O CX for 
Dalton imagined it to be a compound of one atom of 
hydrogen with one of oxygen. Compounds containing 
only two atoms were termed by him "binarj^"; those 
containing three, "ternary"; four, "quaternary," and 
soon. The weight of an atom of oxygen was eight 
times that of an atom of hydrogen; while that of an 
atom of carbon was six times as great as the unit. By 
assigning symbols to the elements, consisting of the 
initial letters of their names, or of the first two letters, 
formulas were developed, indicating the composition of 
the compound, the atomic weights of the elements being 
assured. Thus, NaO signified a compound of an atom 
of sodium (natrium), weighing twenty -three times as 

40 



CHEMISTRY 

much as a similar atom of hydrogen, with an atom of 
oxygen, possessing eight times the weight of an atom 
of hydrogen. Therefore, thirty -one pounds of soda 
should consist of twenty-three pounds of sodium in com- 
bination with eight pounds of oxygen, for, according to 
Dalton, each smallest particle of soda contains an atom 
of each element, and the proportion is not changed, how- 
ever many particles be considered. 

It has been pointed out by Judge Stallo, of Philadel- 
phia, in his Concepts of Physics, that such a hypothesis 
as that of Dalton is no explanation ; that a fact of nature, 
as, for example, the fact of simple and multiple propor- 
tions, is not explained by being minified. Allowing 
the general truth of this statement, it is, nevertheless, 
undoubted that chemistry owes much to Dalton s hy- 
pothesis — a lucky guess at first, it represents one of the 
fundamental truths of nature, although its form must 
be somewhat modified from that in which Dalton con- 
ceived it. Dalton 's work was first expounded by Thomas 
Thomson, professor at Glasgow, in his System of Chem- 
istry, published in 1805; and subsequently in Dalton 's 
own New System of Chemical Philosophy, the three vol- 
umes of which were published in 1808, in 1810, and in 
1827. 

The determination of these "Constants of Nature" 
was at once followed out by many chemists, Thomson 
among the first. But chief among the chemists who 
have pursued this branch of work was Jacob Berzelius, 
a Swede, who devoted his long life (1779-1848) to the 
manufacture of compounds, and to the determination of 
their composition, or, as it is still termed, the determina- 
tion of the "atomic weights" — more correctly, "equiv- 
alents" — of the elements of which they are composed. 
It is to him that we owe most of our analytical methods, 
for, prior to his time, there were few, if any, accurate 
analyses. Although Lavoisier had devised a method 

41 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

for the analysis of compounds of carbon, viz., by burn- 
ing the organic compounds in an atmosphere of oxygen 
contained in a bell-jar over mercury, and measuring 
the volume of carbon dioxide produced, as well as that 
of the residual oxygen, Berzelius achieved the same 
results more accuratelj 7 and more expeditiously by heat- 
ing the substance, mixed with chlorate of potassium and 
sodium chloride, and then estimating the hydrogen as 
well as the carbon ; this process was afterwards perfected 
by Liebig. Berzelius, however, was able to show that 
compounds of carbon, like those of other elements, were 
instances of combination in constant and in multiple 
proportions. 

In 1 815 two papers were published in the Annals of 
Philosophy by Dr. Prout, which have had much influ- 
ence on the progress of chemistry. They dealt with the 
figures which were being obtained by Thomson, Berze- 
lius, and others, at that time supposed to represent the 
"atomic weights" of the elements. Prout's hypothesis, 
based on only a few numbers, was that the atomic weights 
of all elements were multiples of that of Irydrogen, taken 
as unity. There was much dispute regarding this as- 
sertion at the time, but as it was contradicted b} 7 Berze- 
lius 's numbers, the balance of opinion was against it. 
But about the 3 7 ear 1840 Dumas discovered an error in 
the number (12.12) given by Berzelius as the atomic 
weight of carbon ; and with his collaborator, Stas, un- 
dertook the redetermination of the atomic weights of the 
commoner elements — for example, carbon, oxygen, chlo- 
rine, and calcium. This line of research was subsequent- 
ly pursued alone by Stas, whose name will always be 
remembered for the precision and accuracy of his experi- 
ments. At first Dumas and Stas inclined to the view 
that Prout 's hypothesis was a just one, but it was com- 
pletely disproved by Stas's subsequent work, as well as 
by that of numerous other observers. It is, nevertheless, 

42 



CHEMISTRY 

curious that a much larger proportion of the atomic 
weights approximate to whole numbers than would be 
foretold by the doctrine of chances, and perhaps the last 
has not been heard of Prout's hypothesis, although in 
its original crude form it is no longer worthy of credence. 
One of the most noteworthy of the discoveries of the 
century was made by Gay-Lussac (i 778-1 850) in the year 
1808. In conjunction with Alexander von Humboldt, 
Gay-Lussac had rediscovered about three years before 
what had previously been established by Cavendish — 
namely, that, as nearly as possible, two volumes of hy- 
drogen combine with one volume of oxygen to form water, 
the gases having been measured at the same temperature 
and pressure. Humboldt suggested to Gay-Lussac that 
it would be well to investigate whether similar simple 
relations exist between the volumes of other gaseous 
substances when they combine with each other. This 
turned out to be the case ; it appeared that almost exactly 
two volumes of carbonic oxide unite with one volume of 
oxygen to form carbon dioxide ; that equal volumes of 
chlorine and hydrogen unite to form hydrochloric acid 
gas; that two volumes of ammonia gas consist of three 
volumes of hydrogen in union with one volume of nitro- 
gen, and so on. From such facts, Gay-Lussac was led 
to make the statement that: The weights of equal vol- 
umes of both simple and compound gases, and therefore 
their densities, are proportional to their empiricall}' 
found combining weights, or to rational multiples of the 
latter. Gay-Lussac recognized this discovery of his to be 
a support for the atomic theory ; but it did not accord 
with many of the then received atomic weights. The 
assumption that equal volumes of gases contain equal 
numbers of particles, or, as they were termed by him, 
molecules integrantes, was made in 181 1 by Avogadro, 
professor of physics at Turin (1776-1856). This theory, 
which has proved of the utmost importance to the sci- 

43 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ences both of physics and of chemistry, had no doubt oc- 
curred to Gay-Lussac, and had been rejected by him for 
the following reasons : A certain volume of hydrogen, 
say one cubic inch, may be supposed to contain an equal 
number of particles (atoms) as an equal volume of chlo- 
rine. Now these two gases unite in equal volumes. The 
deduction appears so far quite legitimate that one atom 
of hydrogen has combined with one atom of chlorine. 
But the resulting gas occupies two cubic inches, and 
must therefore contain the same number of particles of 
hydrogen chloride, the compound of the two elements, 
as one cubic inch originally contained of Irydrogen, or of 
chlorine. Thus we have two cubic inches containing, 
of uncombined gases, twice as many particles as is con- 
tained in that volume, after combination. Avogadro's 
hypothesis solved the difficulty. By premising two dif- 
ferent orders of particles, now termed atoms and mole- 
cules, the solution was plain. According to him, each 
particle, or molecule, of hydrogen is a complex, and con- 
tains two atoms; the same is the case with chlorine. 
When these gases combine, or rather react, to fonn hy- 
drogen chloride, the phenomenon is one of a change of 
partners; the molecule, the double atom, of hydrogen 
splits ; the same is the case with the molecule of chlorine ; 
and each liberated atom of hydrogen unites with a lib- 
erated atom of chlorine, forming a compound, hydrogen 
chloride, which equally consists of a molecule, or double 
atom. Thus two cubic inches of hydrogen chloride con- 
sist of a definite number of molecules, equal in number 
to those contained in a cubic inch of hydrogen, plus those 
contained in a cubic inch of chlorine. The case is pre- 
cisely similar, if other compounds of gases be considered. 
Berzelius was at first inclined to adopt this theory, 
and indeed went so far as to change many of his atomic 
weights to make them fit it. But later he somewhat 
withdrew from his position, for it appeared to him that it 

44 



CHEMISTRY 

was hazardous to extend to liquids and solids a theory 
which could be held only of gases. Avogadro's sugges- 
tion, therefore, rested in abeyance until the publication, 
in 1858, by Cannizzaro, now professor of chemistry in 
Rome, of an essay in which all the arguments in favor 
of the hypothesis were collected and stated in a mas- 
terly manner. It will be advisable to revert to this 
hypothesis at a later point, and to consider other guides 
for the determination of atomic weights. 

In 1819, Dulong (1785-1838), director of the Ecole Poly- 
technique at Paris, and Petit (1 791— 1820), professor of 
physics there, made the discovery that equal amounts of 
heat are required to raise equally the temperature of solid 
and liquid elements, provided quantities are taken pro- 
portional to their atomic weights. Thus, to raise the 
temperature of 56 grammes of iron through one degree 
requires approximately the same amount of heat as is re- 
quired to raise through one degree 32 grammes of sul- 
phur, 63.5 grammes of copper, and so on; these numbers 
representing the atomic weights of the elements named. 
In other words, equal numbers of atoms have equal ca- 
pacity for heat. The number of heat units, or calories 
(one calory is the amount of heat required to raise the 
temperature of 1 gramme of water through i° C), which is 
necessary to raise the atomic weight expressed in grammes 
of any solid or liquid element through i° C. is approxi- 
mately 6.2; it varies between 5.7 and 6.6 in actual part. 
This affords a means of determining the true value of the 
atomic weight of an element, as the following example 
will show: The analysis of the only compound of zinc 
and chlorine shows that it contains 47.49 per cent, of 
zinc and 52.16 per cent, of chlorine. Now one grain of 
hydrogen combines with 35.5 grains of chlorine to form 
36.5 grains of hydrogen chloride; and, as already re- 
marked, one volume of hydrogen and one volume of 
chlorine combine, forming two volumes of hydrogen chlo- 

45 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ride. Applying Avogadro's hypothesis, one molecule of 
hydrogen and one molecule of chlorine react to yield two 
molecules of hydrogen chloride; and as each molecule 
is supposed to consist in this case of two atoms, hydro- 
gen chloride consists of one atom of each of its constitu- 
ent elements. The amount of that element, therefore, 
which combines with 35.5 grains of chlorine may give 
the numerical value of the atomic weight of the element, if 
the compound contains one atom of each element ; in that 
case the formula of the above compound would be zinc, 
and the atomic weight of zinc, 32.7; but if the formula 
is ZuCl 3 , the atomic weight of zinc would be 32.7x2; if 
ZuCl 3 , 32.7x3, and so on. The specific heat of metallic 
zinc enables this question to be solved. For it has been 
found, experimentally, to be about 0.095 ; and 6.2-^0.095 
=65.2, a close approximation to 32.7x2 = 65.4. The 
conclusion is therefore drawn that zinc chloride is com- 
posed of one atom of zinc in combination with two atoms of 
chlorine, that the atomic weight of zinc is 65.4, and that 
the molecular weight of zinc chloride is 65.4-f (35.5x2)= 
136.4. Inasmuch as the relative weight of a molecule 
of hydrogen is 2 (that of an atom being 1), zinc chloride 
in the gaseous state should be 136.4-^2=68.2 times that 
of hydrogen, measured at the same temperature and 
pressure. This has been found, experimentally, to be 
the case. 

The methods of determining the vapor densities, or 
relative weights of vapors, are three in number ; the first 
method, due to Dumas (1827), consists in vaporizing the 
substance in question in a bulb of glass or of porcelain, 
at a known temperature, closing the bulb while still hot, 
and weighing it after it is cold. Knowing the capacity 
of the bulb, the weight of hydrogen necessa^ to fill it at 
the desired temperature can be calculated, and the density 
of the vapor thus arrived at. A second method was de- 
vised by Gay-Lussac and perfected by A. W. Hofmann 

46 



CHEMISTRY 

(1868) ; and a third, preferable for its simplicity and ease 
of execution, is due to Victor Meyer (1881). 

In 1858, as already remarked, Cannizzaro showed the 
connection between these known facts, and for the first 
time attention was called to the true atomic weights, 
which were, up to that time, confused with equivalents, 
or weights of elements required to replace one unit weight 
of hydrogen. These were generally regarded as atomic 
weights by Dalton and his contemporaries. 

Some exceptions had been observed to the law of 
Dulong and Petit, viz., beryllium, or glucinium, an ele- 
ment occurring in emeralds ; boron, of which borax is a 
compound; silicon, the component of quartz and flint, 
and carbon. It was found by Weber that at high tem- 
peratures the specific heats of these elements are higher, 
and the atomic heats approximate to the number of 6.2 ; 
but this behavior is not peculiar to these elements, for it 
appears that the specific heat of all elements increases 
with rise of temperature. 

A certain number of exceptions have also been noticed 
to the law of Gay-Lussac, which may be formulated: 
the molecular weight of a compound in a gaseous state is 
twice its density referred to hydrogen. Thus equal vol- 
umes of ammonia and hydrogen chloride unite to form 
ammonium chloride. It was to be expected that the 
density should be half the molecular weight, thus : 

NH 3 + HC1 = NH 4 C1; and 53.5 -1-2 = 26 .75 = density. 
(14+3) (1+35-5) 53-5 

But the density actually found is only half that num- 
ber, viz., 13.37; an d for long this and similar cases were 
supposed to be exceptions to the law of Gay-Lussac, viz., 
that equal volumes of gases at the same pressure expand 
equally for equal rise of temperature. In other instances 
the gradual decrease in density with rise of temperature 

47 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

can be followed, as with chloral hydrate, the products of 
which are chloral and water. 

It was recognized by St. Claire Deville (1857) that the 
decrease in density of such mixtures of gases was due, 
not to their being exceptions to Avogadro's law, but to 
the gradual decomposition of the compound body with 
rise of temperature. To this gradual decomposition 
he gave the name dissociation. This conception has 
proved of the utmost importance to the science, as will be 
seen in the sequel. To take the above instance of ammo- 
nium chloride, its abnormal density is due to its dissoci- 
ation into ammonia and hydrogen chloride ; and the gas 
which is obtained on raising its temperature consists, 
not of gaseous ammonium chloride, but of a mixture of 
ammonia and hydrogen chloride, which, as is easily 
seen, occupy, when separate, twice the volume that would 
be occupied by the gaseous compound. Of recent years 
it has been shown by Brereton Baker that, if perfectly 
free from moisture, ammonium chloride gasifies as such, 
and that its density in the state of vapor is, in fact, 
26.75. 

The molecular complexity of gases has thus gradually 
become comprehended, and the truth of Avogadro's law 
has gained acceptance. And as a means of picturing the 
behavior of gaseous molecules, the " Kinetic Theory of 
Gases " has been devised by Joule, Clausius, Maxwell, 
Thomson (Lord Kelvin), and others. On the assumption 
that the pressure of a gas on the walls of the vessel which 
contains it is due to the continued impacts of its molecules, 
and that the temperature of a gas is represented by the 
product of the mass of the molecules, or the square of their 
velocity, it has been possible to offer a mechanical ex- 
planation of Boyle's law, that at constant temperature the 
volume of a gas diminishes in proportion as the pressure 
increases; of Gay-Lussac's law, that all gases expand 
equally for equal rise of temperature, provided pressure 

48 



CHEMISTRY 

is kept constant ; the condition being that equal volumes 
of gases contain equal numbers of molecules. A striking 
support is lent to this chain of reasoning by the facts dis- 
covered by Thomas Graham (1805- 1869), professor at 
University College, London, and subsequently master 
of the Royal Mint. Graham discovered that the rate of 
diffusion of gases into each other is inversely as the 
square roots of their densities. For instance, the density 
of hydrogen being taken as unity, that of oxygen is six- 
teen times as great ; if a vessel containing hydrogen be 
made to communicate with one containing oxygen, the 
hydrogen will pass into the oxygen and mix with it ; and, 
conversely, the oxygen will pass into the hydrogen vessel. 
This is due to the intrinsic motion of the molecule of 
each gas. And Graham found, experimentally, that 
for each volume of oxygen which enters the hydrogen 
vessel four volumes of hydrogen will enter the oxygen 
vessel. Now, 4=V I 6 ; and as these masses are relatively 
1 and 16, and their temperatures are equal, the square of 
their velocities are respectively 1 and 16. 

The question of the molecular complexity of gases 
being thus disposed of, it remains to be considered what 
are the relative complexity of liquid molecules. The 
answer is indicated by a study of the capillary phenom- 
ena of liquids, one method of measuring which is the 
height of their ascent in narrow or capillary tubes. 
We shall not enter here into detail as to the method 
and arguments necessarj^; suffice it to say that the 
Hungarian physicist Eotvos was the first to indicate 
the direction of research, and that Ramsay and Shields 
succeeded in proving that the complexity of the mole- 
cules of most liquids is not greater than that of the 
gases which they form on being vaporized; and also 
that certain liquids, e.g., water, the alcohols, and other 
liquids, are more or less "associated," i.e., their mole- 
cules occur in couplices of two, three, four, or more, and 
D 49 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

as the temperature is raised the complexity of molecular 
structure diminishes. 

As regards the molecular complexity of solids, noth- 
ing definite is known, and, moreover, there appears to be 
no method capable of revealing it. 

While the researches of which a short account has 
now been given have led to knowledge regarding the 
nature of molecules, the structure of the molecule has 
excited interest since the early years of the century, 
and its investigation has led to important results. The 
fact of the decomposition of acidified water by an elec- 
tric current, discovered by Nicholson and Carlisle, and 
of salts into "bases" and "acids" by Berzelius and 
Hisinger in 1803, led to the belief that a close connec- 
tion exists between electric energy, or, as it was then 
termed, "electric force," and the affinity which holds 
the constituents of chemical compounds in combination. 
In 1807 Davy propounded the theory that all compounds 
consist of two portions, one electro-positive and the other 
electro-negative. This idea was the result of experi- 
ments on the behavior of substances, such, for example, 
as copper and sulphur — if portions of these elements be 
insulated and then brought into contact they become op- 
positely electrified. The degree of electrification is in- 
tensified by rise of temperature until, when combination 
ensues, the electrification vanishes. Combination, there- 
fore, according to Davy, is concurrent with the equaliza- 
tion of potentials. In 1812 Berzelius brought forward an 
electro-chemical theory which for the following twenty 
years was generally accepted. His primary assump- 
tion was that the atoms of elements, or, in certain cases, 
groups of atoms, are themselves electrified; that each 
atom, or group of atoms, possesses two poles, one pos- 
itive, the other negative; that the electrification of one 
of these poles predominates over that of the other, so 
that the atom or group is itself, as a whole, electro-pos- 

50 



CHEMISTRY 

itive, or electro-negative; that combination ensued be- 
tween such oppositely electrified bodies by the neutral- 
ization, partial or complete, of their electric charges; 
and, lastly, that the polarity of an element or group could 
be determined by noting whether the element or group 
separated at the positive or at the negative pole of 
the galvanic battery, or electrolysis. For Berzelius, 
oxygen was the most electro-negative and potassium 
the most electro-positive of the elements, the bridge be- 
tween the "non-metals" and the "metals" being hy- 
drogen, which, with nitrogen, forms a basic, or electro- 
positive, group, while with chlorine, etc., it forms elec- 
tro-negative groups. The fact that an electric current 
splits compounds in solution into two portions led Ber- 
zelius to devise his "dualistic" system, which involved 
the assumption that all compounds consist of two por- 
tions, one electro-positive, the other electro-negative. 
Thus sulphate of magnesium and potassium was to be 
regarded as composed of electro-positive potassium 
sulphate in combination with electro - negative mag- 
nesium sulphate; the former in its turn consisted of 
electro-negative sulphur trioxide (S0 3 ) in combination 
with electro-positive oxide of potassium (K 2 0) ; while 
each of these proximate constituents of potassium sul- 
phate were themselves composed of the electro-nega- 
tive oxj^gen in combination with electro-positive sul- 
phur, or potassium. On contrasting sulphur with po- 
tassium, however, the former was considered more 
electro-negative than the latter ; so that the group S0 3 
as a whole was electro-negative, while K 2 was electro- 
positive. The symbols given above, which are still in 
universal use, were also devised by Berzelius for the pur- 
pose of illustrating and emphasizing his views. These 
views, however, met with little acceptance at the time 
in England. 

Lavoisier's idea, that oxj^gen was the necessary con- 

51 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

stituent of all acids, began about this time to lose ground. 
For Davy had proved the elementary nature of chlorine ; 
and hydrochloric acid, one of the strongest, was thus 
seen to contain no oxygen, and Davy expressed the 
view, founded on his observation, that iodic "acid," 
I 2 5 , was devoid of acid properties until dissolved in 
water, and that the essential constituent of all acids was 
hydrogen, not oxygen. The bearing of this theory on 
the dualistic theory is, that while, e.g., sulphuric acid 
was regarded by Berzelius as S0 3 , containing no hy- 
drogen, and was supposed to be separated as such at 
the positive pole of a battery, Davy's suggestion led 
to the opposite conclusion that the formula of sulphuric 
acid is H 2 S0 4 , and that by the current it is resolved into 
H 2 and S0 4 . Faraday's electrolytic law, that when 
a current is passed through electrolytes in solution the 
elements are liberated in quantities proportional to their 
equivalents, led to the abandonment of the dualistic 
theory. For when a current is passed in succession 
through acidified water, fused lead chloride, and a so- 
lution of potassium sulphate, the quantities of hydro- 
gen and oxygen from the water, of lead and chlorine 
from the lead chloride, and the potassium of the sul- 
phate are in accordance with Faraday's law. But in 
addition to the potassium there is liberated at the same 
pole an equivalent of hydrogen. Now, if Berzelius 's 
theory be true, the products should be S0 3 and K 2 0, 
but if the opposite view be correct, then K 2 is liberated 
first and by its subsequent action on water it jaelds 
potash and its equivalent of hydrogen. This was 
pointed out first by Daniell, professor at King's College, 
London, and it was regarded as a powerful argument 
against Berzelius's system. In 1833, too, Graham in- 
vestigated the phosphoric acids, and prepared the salts 
of three, to which he gave the names, ortho-, pyro-, and 
meta- phosphoric acids. To understand the bearing 

52 



CHEMISTRY 

of this on the doctrine of dualism it must be remem- 
bered that P20 5 , pentoxide of phosphorus, was at that 
date named phosphoric acid. When dissolved in water 
it reacts with bases, forming salts — the phosphates. 
But the quantity of water necessary was not then con- 
sidered essential ; Graham, however, showed that there ex- 
ist three series of salts — one set derived from P 2 5 ,3H 2 0, 
one from P 2 5 ,2H 2 0, and a third from P 2 5 ,H 2 0. His 
way of stating the fact was that water could play the 
part of a base; for example, the ordinary phosphate 
of commerce possessed, according to him, the formula 
P 2 5 ,2Na 2 0,H 2 0, two-thirds of the "water of constitu- 
tion " being replaced by oxide of sodium. Liebig, then 
professor at Giessen (1803- 1873), founded on these and 
on similar observations of his own the doctrine of poly- 
basic acids — acids in which one, two, three, or more 
atoms of hydrogen were replaceable by metals. Thus, 
instead of writing, as Graham did, P 2 5 ,2Na 2 0,H 2 0, he 
wrote, P0 4 Na 2 H ; and for orthophosphoric acid P0 4 H 3 . 
The group of atoms (P0 4 ), therefore, existed throughout 
the whole series of orthophosphates, and could exist in 
combination with hydrogen, with hydrogen and metals, or 
with metals alone. Similarly the group (P 2 7 ) was charac- 
teristic of pyrophosphates and (P0 3 ) of metaphosphates, 
for P 2 5 ,2H 2 = (P 2 7 )H 4 ; and P 2 5 ,H 2 0=2(P0 3 )H. 

The first clear ideas of the structure of the molecule 
were, however, gained from the study of the compounds 
of carbon. It was difficult to apply the dualistic theory 
to them. For few of them are electrolytes, and there- 
fore their products of electrolysis, being non-existent, 
could not be classified. Nevertheless, Gay-Lussac re- 
garded alcohol, C 2 H 6 0, as a compound of C 2 H 4 , ethylene, 
and H 2 0, water ; and oxalic acid (anhydrous), C 2 3 , as 
one of C0 2 with CO. The discovery of "isomeric com- 
pounds," i.e., of compounds which possess the same ulti- 
mate formula and yet differ entirely in their properties, 

53 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

forced upon chemists the necessity of attending to the 
structure of the molecule; for only by such a suppo- 
sition could the difference between two isomeric bodies 
be explained. In 1823 Liebig discovered that silver 
fulminate and silver cyanate both possessed the empiri- 
cal formula AgCNO; in 1825 this was followed by the 
discovery by Faraday that oil gas contains a hydro- 
carbon identical in composition with ethylene, C 2 H 4 , yet 
differing from it in properties ; and in 1829 Wohler, pro- 
fessor in Gottingen (1800-1882), discovered that urea, 
a constituent of urine, could be produced by heating 
ammonium cyanate, NH 4 CNO, a substance of the same 
formula. It therefore became clear that the identity 
of a compound must depend on some other cause than 
its ultimate composition. 

In 1833 Liebig and Wohler took an important step in 
elucidating this question by their investigations on 
benzoic acid and acid obtainable by distilling a resin 
named gum benzoin. They showed that this acid, 
C 7 H 6 2 , could be conceived as consisting of the group 
C7H5O, to which they gave the name " benzoyl," in com- 
bination with OH ; that benzoic aldehyde, C 7 H 6 0, might 
be regarded as its compound with hydrogen; that it 
also formed compounds with chlorine, and bromine, and 
sulphur, and replaced hydrogen in ammonia (C 7 H 6 0,NH 2 ). 
They termed this group, benzoyl, a "compound ele- 
ment" or a "radical." This research was followed 
by one by Robert Bunsen, professor at Heidelberg, born 
in 181 1, and recently (1899) dead, which bore reference 
to cacodyl, a compound of arsenic, carbon and hydro- 
gen, in which the idea of a radical was confirmed and 
amplified. 

The idea of a radical having thus become established, 
Jean Baptiste Andree Dumas, professor in Paris (1800-- 
1884), propounded the theory of "substitution," i.e., 
that an element such as chlorine or ox3 7 gen (which, be 

54 



CHEMISTRY 

it noticed, is electro-negative on Berzelius's scale) could 
replace hydrogen in carbon compounds, atom for atom, 
the resulting compound belonging to the same " type " 
as the one from which it was derived. And Laurent, 
warden of the mint at Paris (1807-1853), and Gerhardt, 
professor at Montpelier and at Strasburg (1816-1856), 
emphasized the fact that one element, be it what it maj 7 , 
can replace another without fundamentally altering 
its chemical character, and also that an atom of hydro- 
gen can be replaced by a group of atoms or radical, be- 
having for the occasion like the atom of an element. 
It is to Laurent and Gerhardt that we owe the definition 
of an atom — the smallest quantity of an element which 
can be present in a compound; an equivalent — that weight 
of an element which combines with or replaces one part 
by weight of hydrogen; and a molecule — the smallest 
quantity which can exist in a free state, ivhether of an 
element or a compound. They recognized, too, that a 
molecule of hydrogen, chlorine, etc., consists of two 
atoms. 

In 1849 Wurtz, professor in Paris (1817-1884), and 
Hofmann, then professor in the College of Chemistry 
in London, afterwards at Berlin (1818-1892), discovered 
a series of compounds allied to ammonia, NH 3 , in which 
one or more atoms of hydrogen were replaced by a group 
or radical, such as meth3 7 l (CH 3 ), ethyl (C 2 H 5 ), or phenyl 
(C 6 H 5 ). Wurtz referred such compounds to the ammonia 
"type." They all resemble ammonia in their physical 
properties — smell, taste, etc. — as well as in their power of 
uniting with acids to form salts resembling ammonium 
chloride (NH 4 C1), and other ammonium compounds. 
Shortly afterwards Williamson, professor at University 
College, London, added the "water type," in conse- 
quence of his researches on "mixed ethers" — bodies 
in which the hydrogen of water might be regarded as 
replaced bj^ organic radicals. Thus we have the series : 

55 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

H. 0. H. ; CH 3 . 0. H. ; CH 3 . 0. CH 3 ; and NH 3 ; NH 2 ; 
H 3 ; NH(CH 3 ) 2 ; and N(CH 3 ) 3 ; the first representing com- 
pounds following the water type, the latter the ammonia 
type. This suggestion had been previously made by 
Laurent, in 1846. But Williamson extended his views 
to inorganic compounds; thus, sulphuric acid was re- 
presented as constructed on the double water type — 
HO. S0 2 . OH, being derived from H. 0. (H. H) 0. H, the 
two hydrogen atoms enclosed in brackets being replaced 
by the radical S0 2 . To these types Gerhardt added 
the hydrogen and hydrogen chloride types, H.H. and 
H.C1; and, later, Kekule, professor in Bonn (1829), added 
the marsh gas type C(H) 4 . The next important step 
was taken by Frankland, professor in the Royal School 
of Mines, London; his work, however, had been antici- 
pated by Cunn Brown, professor at Edinburgh Univer- 
sity, in a pamphlet even yet little known. It was to at- 
tribute to elements one or more powers of combination. 
To these he gave the name "valency," and the capac- 
ity of possessing valency was called " quantivalence. " 
Thus hydrogen was taken as a " monad," or monovalent. 
Chlorine, because it unites with hydrogen atom to atom, 
is also a monad. Oxygen, having the power to combine 
with two atoms of hydrogen, was termed a dyad, or 
divalent; nitrogen a triad, or trivalent; carbon a tetrad, 
or tetravalent, and so on. This is evident from inspec- 
tion of the formulas of their compounds with hydrogen, 
thus: 

H-CI; H-0— H; H— N<£J; h>C<* 

Instances of penta, hexa, and even hepta-valency are 
not wanting. 

This was the key to unlock the structure of chemical 
compounds; and Frankland 's views, just stated, are 
still held by chemists. The determination of the con- 
stitution of compounds, chiefly those of carbon, occupied 

56 



CHEMISTRY 

the attention of chemists, almost exclusively, until 1880. 
The plan of action is much the same as 'that of a mech- 
anician who wishes to imitate a complicated mechan- 
ism. He must first dissect it into groups of mechanical 
contrivances; these are next constructed; and they are 
finally built together into the complete machine. In 
certain cases the atoms of carbon are arranged in 
"chains," as, for example, in pentyl alcohol: 

H3C-C-C-C-C-0-H 
H 2 H 2 H 2 H 3 

each atom being tetrad, and its "affinities," or powers 
of combination, saturated either with hydrogen or with 
those of neighboring atoms of carbon ; in others they are 
in the form of a "ring," as in benzene, the formula of 
which was first suggested by Kekule, viz. : 

H_H 
HC<£_£>CH; 

or in both, as in ethyl benzene, 



H H 
C~C 

c_c 

H-H 



H H 
C — C — CH. 
H H 



One or more atoms of nitrogen, or of oxygen, may form 
part of the circle, as in pyridine : 

H_H H H 

N < c _ c > CH and f urf urane, o < £ = g, 

H-H H H 

and so on. By means of conceptions such as these 
many interesting compounds have been built up out 
of the elements which they contain; e.g., urea and uric 
acid, constituents of urine; theobromine and caffeine, 
the essential principles of cocoa and tea; alizarine and 
indigo, valuable dyestuffs ; and several of the alkaloids, 
bitter principles contained in plants, of great medicinal 
value. 

57 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

They have led, too, to the discovery of many brilliant 
colors, now almost universally employed, to the ex- 
clusion of those less brilliant, because less pure, derived 
from plants, and in one or two cases from animals ; the 
manufacture of gun-cotton, dynamite, and similar high 
explosives; and to the development of the candle in- 
dustry ; the sugar manufacture ; to improvement in 
tanning, in brewing, and in the preparation of gas and 
oils for illuminating purposes. In short, it may be said 
that the industrial progress of the latter half of the cen- 
tury has been due to the theoretical views of which a 
short sketch has just been given. 

Such formulas, however, can evidently not represent 
the true constitution of matter, inasmuch as the atoms 
are imagined to lie on a plane, whereas it is evident 
that they must occupy space of three dimensions and 
possess the attributes of solidity. The conception which 
led to the formulation of such views was due first 
to Pasteur, in his later years director of the institute 
known by his name at Paris, and more directly to 
LeBel and Van't Hoff, now professor at Berlin, inde- 
pendently of each other. In 1848 Pasteur discovered 
that it was possible to separate the two varieties of 
tartaric acid from each other; and that that one which 
rotated the plane of polarized light to the right gave 
crystals with an extra face, unsymmetrically disposed 
with regard to the other faces of the crystal. The variety, 
the solution of which in water was capable of producing 
left-handed rotation, also possessed a similar face, but 
so placed that its reflection in a mirror reproduced the 
right-handed variety. Pasteur also showed that a 
mixture of these acids gave crystals not characterized 
by an unsymmetrically placed face; and also that the 
solution was without action on polarized light. These 
observations remained unexplained, until LeBel and 
Van't Hoff, in 1874, simultaneously and independently 

58 



CHEMISTRY 

devised a theory which has, up till now, stood the test 
of research. It is briefly this: Imagine two regular 
tetrahedra, or three-sided pyramids, standing each on its 
triangular base. An idea can best be got by a model, 
easily made by laying on a table three lucifer matches 
so as to form an equilateral triangle, and erecting a 
tripod with three other matches, so that each leg of the 
tripod stands on one corner of the triangle. At the 
centre of such a tetrahedron, an atom of carbon is sup- 
posed to be placed. Marsh gas, CH 4 , is supposed to 
have such a structure, each corner, or solid angle of the 
structure (of which there are four), being occupied by 
an atom of hydrogen. This represents the solid or 
stereochemical formula of methane or marsh gas. Now, 
suppose one of the atoms of hydrogen in each of these 
structures to be replaced by chlorine, the group (OH), 
or any other monovalent element or group. It is evident 
that if not exactly similar (owing to the replacement 
not having been made at similar corners in each), the 
two structures can be made similar by turning one of 
them round, until the position of the substituting atom 
or group (which we will term X) coincides in position 
with X in the stationary one. If two such replacements 
be made, say, with X and Y in each, coincidence can 
again be made to take place ; but the same is not the case 
if X, Y, and Z replace three atoms of hydrogen in the 
structure; for there is one way of replacement which 
is the optical image of the other, and represents the 
other's reflection in a mirror. 




and 




Y 



Now, it is found that when the four corners of such 
a structure are occupied by four separate atoms or groups, 

59 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

or when (as the expression goes) the body contains 
an "asymmetrical carbon atom," if the substance or 
one of its derivations can be obtained in a crystalline 
form, the crystals are also asymmetric, i. e., arc de- 
velops a face which is the mirror-reflection of a similar 
face developed on the other variety; and if a beam of 
polarized light be passed through the solution of the 
substance, its plane is rotated to the left if one variety 
be used, and, if the other, to the right. This hypothesis 
of LeBel's and Van't Hoff's has had an enormous 
influence on the progress of organic chemistry. By 
its means Fischer, now professor at Berlin, has ex- 
plained the reason of the existence of the enormous 
number of bodies analogous to grape and cane sugar, 
and has prepared many new varieties; and it appears 
likely that the terpenes, a class of bodies allied to tur- 
pentine, and comprising most of the substances to which 
the odor of flowers is due, may thereby find their explana- 
tion. It may be mentioned in passing that Pasteur, 
having found that ordinary mould destroyed one variety 
of tartaric acid rather than the other in a mixture of 
the two, and made use of this observation in order to 
prepare the unattached variety in a state of purity, was 
led to study the action of organisms more or less re- 
sembling mould; and that this has led to the develop- 
ment of the science of bacteriology, which has had an 
enormous influence on our views regarding fermentation 
in general, and guides the work of our physicians, our 
surgeons (witness Lister's antiseptic treatment), our 
sanitary engineers in their estimate of the purity of 
drinking-water and of the disposal of sewage, of our 
manufacturers of beer and spirits, of wine-growers, and 
more recently of farmers. All these processes depend 
upon the action of organisms in producing chemical 
changes, whether in the tissues of the body, causing 
or curing disease, or in the production of flavored alcohol 

60 



CHEMISTRY 

from sugar, or in the manufacture of butter and cheese, 
or in preparing the land for the reception of crops. We 
also owe to the genius of Van't Hoff the most impor- 
tant advance of recent times in the region of physical 
chemistry. It has been observed by Raoult, professor 
at Grenoble, that the freezing-point of a solvent as a 
general rule is lowered to the same extent if there be 
dissolved in it quantities of substances proportional to 
their molecular weights. Thus, supposing 1.80 grams 
of grape-sugar be dissolved in 100 grams of water and 
the solution cooled below o° with constant stirring, ice 
separates suddenly in thin spicules, and the temperature 
rises to — 0. 185 . If 3.42 grams of cane-sugar be similarly 
dissolved in 100 grams of water, the freezing-point of the 
solution is again — 0.185 . Now, 1.80 and 3.42 are re- 
spectively the hundredth part of the molecular weights 
of grape-sugar (C 6 Hi 2 6 ) and cane-sugar (C ]2 H 22 O u ). 
Similarly, Raoult found that quantities proportional 
to molecular weights dissolved in a solvent depress the 
vapor pressure of that solvent equally, or, what comes 
to the same thing, raise its boiling-point by an equal 
number of degrees. But ordinary salts, such as sodium 
chloride, potassium nitrate, etc., dissolved in water, give 
too great a depression of the freezing-point and too high 
a boiling-point. Next, it has been observed by botanists, 
Devries, PfefTer, and others, who had examined the ascent 
of sap in plants, that if a vessel of unglazed porcelain, so 
treated as to cause a film of cupric ferrocyanide (a slimy 
red compound) to deposit in the pores of its walls, be 
filled with a weak (about 1 per cent.) solution of sugar 
or similar substance, and plunged in a vessel of pure 
water, water entered through the pores. By attaching 
a monometer to the porous vessel the pressure exerted 
by the entering water could be measured Such press- 
ure was termed "osmotic pressure," referring to the 
" osmosis " or passage through the walls of the vessel. 

61 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Such prepared walls are permeable freely to water, but 
not to sugar or similar bodies. Van't Hoff pointed out 
that the total pressure registered is proportional to the 
amount of substance in solution, and that it is propor- 
tional to the absolute temperature, and he showed, be- 
sides, that the pressure exerted by the sugar molecules 
is the same as that which would be exerted at the same 
temperature were an equal number of molecules of hydro- 
gen to occupy the same volume as the sugar solution. 
This may be expressed by stating that when in dilute 
solution sugar molecules behave as if they were present 
in the gaseous state. Here again, however, it was 
noticed that salts tended to give a higher pressure; it 
was difficult to construct a semi-permeable diaphragm, 
however, which would resist the passage of salt mole- 
cules, while allowing those of water to pass freely. Last- 
ly, Arrhenius, of Stockholm, had shown that the con- 
ductivity of salt solutions for electricity may be ex- 
plained on the assumption that when a salt, such as 
KN0 3 is dissolved in water, it dissociates into portions 
similar in number and kind to those it would yield if 
electrolyzed (and if no secondary reactions were to take 
place). Such portions (K and N0 3 , for example) had 
been named ions by Faraday. The conductivity of 
such solutions becomes greater, per unit of dissolved 
salt, the weaker the solution, until finally a limit is 
reached, after which further dilution no longer increases 
conductivity. Now Van't Hoff united all these isolated 
observations and showed their bearing on each other. 
Stated shortly, the hypothesis is as follows: When a 
substance is dissolved in a large quantity of a solvent, 
its molecules are separated from each other to a distance 
comparable with that which obtains in gases. Thej' 
are, therefore, capable of independent action ; and when 
placed in a vessel the walls of which are permeable to the 
solvent, but not to the dissolved substance ("semi- 

62 



CHEMISTRY 

permeable membrane"), the imprisoned molecules of 
the latter exert pressure on the interior surface of these 
walls as if they were gaseous. Van't Hoff showed the 
intimate connection between this phenomenon and the 
depression of freezing-point and the use of vapor pressure 
already alluded to. He pointed out further that the ex- 
ceptions to this behavior, noticed in the case of dissolved 
salts, are due to their "electric dissociation/' or "ioniza- 
tion," as it is now termed ; and that in a sufficiently dilute 
solution of potassium nitrate, for example, the osmotic 
pressure, and the correlated depression of freezing-point 
and rise of boiling-point, are practically equal to what 
would be produced were the salt to be split into its ions, 
K and N0 3 . These views were vigorously advocated 
by Ostwald, professor at Leipzig, in his Zeitschrift fur 
physikalische Chemie, and he and his pupils have done 
much to gather together facts in confirmation of this 
theory, and in extending its scope. 

It must be understood that the ions K and N0 3 are 
hot, strictly speaking, atoms; they are charged atoms; 
the K retains a -f , and the N0 3 a — charge. On im- 
mersing into the solution the poles of a battery, one 
charged -+- and the other — , the + K atoms are attracted 
to the — pole, and are there discharged ; as soon as they 
lose their charge they are free to act on the water, when 
they liberate their equivalent of hydrogen. Similarly, 
the — N0 3 groups are discharged at the -f- pole, and 
abstract hydrogen from the water, liberating an equiva- 
lent quantity of oxygen. Thus the phenomenon of 
electrolysis, so long a mysterious process, finds a simple 
explanation. The course of ordinary chemical reac- 
tions is also readily realized when viewed in the light 
of this theory. Take, for example, the ordinary equa- 
tion : 

AgN0 3 .Aq+ NaCl.Ag = AgCl+ NaN0 3 .Aq ; 

i.e., solutions of silver nitrate and sodium chloride give 

63 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

a precipitate of silver chloride, leaving sodium nitrate 
in solution. By the new views, such an equation must 
be written : 

+ — + — + — 

Ag.Aq+ N0 3 .Aq+ Na.Aq+ Cl.Aq= AgCl+ Na.Aq+ N0 3 .Aq. 

The compound, silver chloride, being insoluble in 
water, is formed by the union of the ions Ag and CI, 
and their consequent discharge, forming an electrically 
neutral compound; while the sodium ions, charged 
positively together with the N0 3 ions, negatively charged, 
remain in solution. 

One more application of the principle may be given. 
Many observers — Andrews, Favre, and Silbermann, 
but especially Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen, and M. 
Berthelot, of Paris — have devoted much labor and time 
to the measurement of the heat evolved during chemical 
reactions. Now, while very different amounts of heat 
are evolved when chlorine, bromine, or iodine combine 
respectively with sodium or potassium, the number of 
heat units evolved on neutralizing sodium or potassium 
hydroxide with hydrochloric, hydrobromic, hydriodic, 
or nitric acids is always about 13,500. How can this fact 
be explained ? It finds its explanation as follows : These 
acids and bases are ionized in solution as shown in the 
equation : 

+ — + — + — 

H. Aq + CI. Aq. + Na. Aq + OH. Aq= H.OH + Na. Aq + CI. Aq. 

Water is the only compound formed ; and it is produced 
by the union of the hydrogen-ion originally belonging 
to the acid, and the OH or hydroxyl-ion originally be- 
longing to the base. No further change has occurred; 
hence the uniform evolution of heat by the interaction 
of equivalent quantities of these acids and bases. 

It now remains to give a short account of the greatest 
generalization which has as yet been made in chemistry. 

64 



CHEMISTRY 

It has been termed the "Periodic Arrangement of the 
Elements." 

In 1864 Newlands, of London, and Lothar Meyer, late 
of Tubingen, found that by arranging the elements in 
the order of their atomic weights certain regularities 
were to be observed between each element, and in gen- 
eral the eighth in succession from it, in the order of their 
numerical value. Such similar elements formed groups 
or quantities; while the elements separating them be- 
long to a period, hence the name "periodic arrange- 
ment." Commencing with lithium, a light, lustrous 
metal found in silicate in certain minerals, we have the 
following series : 



Lithium 


Beryllium 


Boron 


Carbon 


7 


9.2 


11 


12 


Sodium 


Magnesium 


Aluminum 


Silicon 


23 


24-3 


27 


28 


Nitrogen 


Oxygen 


Fluorine 


Neon 


14 


16 


19 


20 


Phosphorus 


Sulphur 


Chlorine 


Argon 


31 


34 


35-5 


40 



and so on. It is unnecessary to point out in detail the 
resemblances between the elements which stand in the 
vertical columns; but it may be stated that the resem- 
blance extends also to the formulas and properties of 
their compounds. Thus the chlorides of lithium and 
sodium are each white soluble salts, of the formulas 
LiCl and NaCl; oxides of magnesium and of beryllium 
are both insoluble white earthy powders, MgO and 
BeO (GeO), and so on. Newlands, in his prelimi- 
nary sketch, termed this order the "Law of Octaves," 
and predicted the existence of certain undiscovered 
elements which should occupy unfilled positions in the 
table. Mendeleef, professor at St. Petersburg, in 1869 
amplified and extended these relations; and he and 
Meyer pointed out that the volume occupied by equal 
numbers of atoms of such elements underwent a periodic 
E 65 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

variation when the elements are classified as above. 
The prediction of undiscovered elements was made by 
Mendeleef in a more assured manner; and in several 
cases they have been realized. Thus what Mendeleef 
called "ekaboron" has since been discovered by Lecoq 
de Boisbandron and named, patriotically, "gallium"; 
Mendeleef 's " eka-silicon " is now known as "germa- 
nium/' discovered by Winkler ; and " eka-aluminum " 
is now Cleve's "scandium." Moreover, the atomic 
weights of caesium, beryllium, molybdenium, and mer- 
cury have been altered so that they fit the periodic table ; 
and further research has justified the alteration. 

The valency of these elements increases from right 
to left, as will be seen by inspection of the following 
series : 



LiCl BeCl 3 


BCI3 


CC1 4 


NH 4 C1 


Na,0 MgO 


B 2 3 


Si0 2 


PC1 3 


Monad. Dyad. 


Triad. 


Tetrad. 


Triad and Pentad 


OH 2 




FH 


Ne— 


S0 3 




C1(0H)0 3 


A— 


Dyad and Hexad. 


Monad and Heptad. 


No valency. 



The elements of no valency are of recent discovery. 
In 1894 Lord Rajdeigh had determined the density of 
the nitrogen of the atmosphere, having separated from 
it the oxygen and carbon dioxide which is mixed with 
nitrogen in air. He found it to be of somewhat higher 
density than that obtainable from ammonia and other 
compounds of nitrogen. In conjunction with Ramsay 
he investigated atmospheric nitrogen; it was absorbed 
either by a method devised by Cavendish, or by making 
it combine with magnesium at a red heat. They found 
that the unabsorbable residue possessed an unknown 
spectrum, and that its density was nearly 20. To this 
new gas they gave the name "argon," or inactive, see- 
ing that all attempts to cause it to enter into combination 

66 



CHEMISTRY 

had failed. In 1895 Ramsay, searching for possible 
combinations of argon in minerals, experimented with 
one which had been previously examined by Hillebrand, 
of Baltimore, and obtained from it helium, a gas of density 
2, possessing a spectrum which had been previously 
discovered in 1868 in the chromosphere of the sun, by 
Jannsen, of Paris, and named helium by Frankland and 
Lockyer. Subsequent liquefaction of crude argon by 
means of liquid air, prepared by a process invented si- 
multaneously by Linde and Hampson, gave a residue 
which was named by its discoverers, Ramsay and Trav- 
ers, "neon." Liquid argon has yielded two other gases 
also, "krypon" and "xenon." These elements form a 
separate group in the Periodic Table, commencing with 
helium, with atomic weight, 4; neon, 20; argon, 40; 
krypon, 82; and xenon, 128. They all agree in being 
mono-atomic, i.e., their molecules consist of single atoms ; 
and they have no tendency to form compounds, i.e., they 
possess no valency. 

In this sketch of the progress of chemistry during the 
century which has just passed, attention has been paid 
chiefly to the progress of thought. Allusions must, 
however, be made to the applications of chemistry to 
industrial purposes. The development of the soda in- 
dustry, the preparation of carbonate of soda and caustic 
from common salt — initiated in France by LeBlanc 
(1742-1806) — has been developed by Tennant, in Scotland, 
and Muspeath and Gossage, and by Hargreaves, Weldon, 
and Maetea, in England ; this process has at present a 
serious rival in the ammonia-soda process, developed 
by Solway, in Belgium, and by Brunner and Mond, in 
England. The main action of sulphuric acid, so long 
associated with the alkali process, has made enormous 
strides during the present century, but is still, in the 
main, the original process of causing sulphur dioxide in 
presence of water to absorb the oxygen of the air through 

67 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

nitric oxide. But the saving of the oxides of nitrogen 
through the invention of a sulphuric acid power by Gay- 
Lussac, known by his name, and the re-utilization of these 
oxides in the " Glover ' power, invented by John Glover, 
of Newcastle, have greatly lessened the cost of the acid. 
Concentration of the acid in iron vessels is now com- 
mon, the cost of platinum or of fragile glass vessels being 
thereby saved. The desulphurization of iron and the 
removal of silicon, carbon, and phosphorus by Besse- 
mer's process, modified by Thomas and Gilchrist through 
the introduction of a " basic magnesia lining " for the 
convertors, has made it possible to obtain pure iron and 
steel from ores previously regarded as of little value. 

The use of artificial manures, prepared by mixing 
refuse animal matters with tetra-hydrogen, calcium 
phosphate, and nitrate of soda, or sulphate of ammonia, 
first introduced by Liebig, has created a revolution in 
agricultural methods and in the weight of crops obtain- 
able from a given area of soil. The influence of manures 
on crops has been fully studied by Lawes and Gilbert 
for more than fifty years in their experimental farm at 
Rothampstead. The most remarkable advances which 
have been made, however, are due to cheap electric cur- 
rent. The electrolysis of alumina, dissolved in fused 
cryolite to obtain aluminum, an operation carried out at 
Schaffhausen-on-the-Rhine, and at the Falls of Foyers, 
in Scotland; the electro - deposition of pure copper for 
electric wires and cables, electro-silvering, gilding, and 
nickelling, all these are instances where decomposition 
of a compound by the electric current has led to impor- 
tant industrial results. At present soda and chlorine 
are being manufactured by the electrolysis of salt so- 
lution contained in rocking trays, one of the electrodes 
being mercury, by the Castner-Kellner process. This 
manufacture is being carried on at Niagara, as well as 
in England. But electricity as a heating agent finds 

68 



CHEMISTRY 

ever-extending application. Louis Moisson, professor 
at Paris, led the way by utilizing the enormous heat of 
the ore in his electric furnace, thereby, among other in- 
teresting reactions, manufacturing diamonds, small, it 
is true, though none the less real. The use of electricity 
as a heating agent has received new applications. 
Phosphorus is now made by distilling a mixture of phos- 
phates of lime and alumina with coke ; a new polishing 
agent has been found in "carborundum/' a compound 
of carbon and silicon, produced by heating in an electric 
furnace a mixture of sand and coke; and cyanide of 
potassium, almost indispensable for the extraction of 
gold from ores poor in gold, is now manufactured by 
heating a mixture of carbon and carbonate of barium 
in an electric furnace in a current of carbon monoxide. 
These are but some of the instances in which electricity 
has been adopted as an agent in effecting chemical 
changes ; and it may be confidently predicted that the 
earlier years of the twentieth century will witness a great 
development in this direction. It may be pointed out 
that the later developments of industrial chemistry owe 
their success entirely to the growth of chemical theory; 
and it is obvious that that nation which possesses the 
most competent chemists, theoretical and practical, 
is destined to succeed in the competition with other nations 
for commercial supremacy and all its concomitant ad- 
vantages. 

William Ramsay. 



ARCHEOLOGY 



ARCHEOLOGY 

'"TO write of the progress of archaeology in this century- 
is scarcely possible, as the idea of the subject was 
unknown a hundred years ago; it is, therefore, the 
whole history of its opening and development that we have 
to deal with. The conception of the history of man being 
preserved to us in material facts, and not only in written 
words, was quite disregarded until the growth of geology 
had taught men to read nature for themselves, instead of 
trusting to the interpretations formed by their ancestors. 
Even down to the present the academic view is that clas- 
sical archaeology is more important than other branches, 
because it serves to illustrate classical literature. Looked 
at as archaeology, it is, on the contrary, the least impor- 
tant branch, because we already know so much more 
of the classical ages than we do of others. 

It is only within the present generation that it has been 
realized that wherever man has lived he has left the 
traces of his action, and that a systematic and observant 
study of those remains will interpret to us what his life 
was, what his abilities and tastes were, and the extent 
and nature of his mind. Literature is but one branch of 
the archaeology of the higher races; another — equally 
important for the understanding of man — is art; these 
two give the highest and most complex and character- 
istic view of the nature of a race. At the opposite end of 
the scale are the rudest stone weapons which remain as 
the sole traces of the savages who used them. These 

73 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

highest and lowest evidences of mind, and all that lies 
between them, are the domain of archaeology. 

We now purpose to review the growth of archaeology 
in contact with geology, where it concerns man as the 
last of the links of life on the globe; and then to notice 
the archaeology of each country in turn, as it leads on to 
the times of historical record, and so passes down to mod- 
ern times. 

A century ago the world of thought was divided be- 
tween the old and new ideas very differently from what 
is now the case. Then there stood on one side the idea 
of a special creation of an individual man, at 4000 B.C. ; 
the compression of all human history into a prehistoric 
age of about three thousand years, and a fairly logical 
solution of most of the difficulties of understanding in a 
comfortable teleology. On the other hand stood many 
who felt the inherent improbability of such solutions of 
the problem of life, and who were feeling their way to 
some more workable theory on the basis of Laplace, La- 
marck, Erasmus Darwin, and others ; vaguely mingling 
together questions of physics, geology, archaeology, an- 
thropology, and theology, each of which we now see must 
be treated on its own basis, and be decided on internal 
evidence, before we can venture to let it affect our judg- 
ment on other points. 

The great new force which thrust itself in to divide 
and decide on these questions is the scientific study of 
man and his works. Strangely shaped flints had been 
noticed, but no one had any knowledge of their age. 
One such, when found with the bones of a mammoth, 
was attributed to the Roman age, because no person 
could have brought elephants into Britain except some 
Roman general. The argument was excellent and ir- 
refutable until geology found plenty more remains of the 
mammoth and showed that it was here long before the 
Romans. It was less than half a century ago that our 

74 



ARCHEOLOGY 

eyes began to open to the abundant remains of flint- 
using man. Then a single rude stone weapon was an 
unexplained curiosity; now an active collector will put 
together his tens of thousands of specimens, will know 
exactly where they were found, their relation of age and 
of purpose, and their bearing on the history of man. 

Not only have worked flint implements been found 
in the river gravels of France and England, where they 
were first noticed in the middle of this century, but also 
in most parts of Europe, in Egypt on the high desert, 
in Somaliland, at the Cape of Good Hope, in India, Amer- 
ica, and other countries ; and the most striking feature 
is the exact similarity in form wherever they have been 
found. So precisely do the same types recur, so im- 
possible would it be to say from its form whether a flint 
had been found in Europe, Asia, or Africa, that it 
appears as if the art of working had spread from some 
single centre over the rest of the world. This is especially 
the case with the river-gravel flints — the earlier class — 
usually called Paleolithic. Soon after the general di- 
vision had been made between polished stone-work of 
the later or Neolithic times, found on the surface, and 
the rough chipped work of the earlier or Paleolithic 
times, found in geological deposits, a further sub-division 
was made by separating the Paleolithic age into that of 
the river gravels and that of the cave-dwellers. The lat- 
ter has again been divided into three classes by French 
writers, named, from their localities, Mousterien, Solu- 
trien, Magdalenien; and, though these classes may be 
much influenced by locality, they probably have some 
difference of age between them. 

And now within the last few years a still earlier kind 
of workmanship has been recognized in flints found 
in England on the high hills in Kent. Though at first 
much disputed, the human origin of the forms is now 
generally acknowledged, and they show a far ruder 

75 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ability than even the most massive of the Paleolithic 
forms. The position also of these flints, in river de- 
posits lying on the highest hills some six hundred feet 
above the present rivers, shows that the whole of the 
valleys has been excavated since they were deposited, 
and implies a far greater age than any of the gravel 
beds of the Paleolithic ages. 

We, therefore, have passed now at the beginning of 
this century to a far wider view of man's history, and 
classify his earlier ages in Europe thus : 

First — Eolithic : Rudest massive flints from deposits 600 feet up. 

Second — Paleolithic : Massive flints from gravels 200 feet up and 
less (Achuleen). 

Third — Paleolithic — Cave-dwellers : Flints like the preceding and 
flakes (Mousterien). 

Fourth — Paleolithic — Cave-dwellers : Flints well worked and finely 
shaped (Solutrien). 

Fifth — Paleolithic — Cave-dwellers : Abundant bone working and 
drawing (Magdalenien). 

Sixth — Neolithic : Polished flint working, pastoral and agricult- 
ural man. 

What time these periods cover nothing yet proves. 
The date of 4000 B. C. for man's appearance, with which 
belief the nineteenth century started, has been pushed 
back by one discovery after another. Estimates of from 
10,000 to 200,000 years have been given from various pos- 
sible clews. In Egypt an exposure of 7000 years or more 
only gives a faint brown tint to flints lying side by side 
with Paleolithic flints that are black with age. I incline 
to think that 100,000 years B. C. for the rise of the sec- 
ond class, and 10,000 B. C. for the rise of the sixth class 
will be a moderate estimate. 

Passing now from Paleolithic man of the latest geo- 
logical times whose works lie under the deposit of ages, 
to Neolithic man of surface history whose polished stone 
tools lie on the ground, we find also how greatly views 
have changed. For ages past metal-using man has 

76 



ARCHAEOLOGY 

looked on the beautifully polished or chipped weapons 
of his forefathers as "thunderbolts/' possessing magic 
powers, and he often mounted the smaller ones to wear 
as charms. At the beginning of this century well- 
finished stone weapons were only preserved as curiosi- 
ties which might belong to some remote age, but without 
any definite ideas about them. The recognition of long 
ages of earlier unpolished stone work has now put these 
more elaborate specimens to a comparatively late period, 
and yet they are probably older than the date to which 
our forefathers placed the creation of man. 

The beginning of a more intelligent knowledge of 
such things was laid by the systematic excavations 
of the burial mounds scattered over the south of England, 
which was done in the early part of this century by Sir 
Richard Colt Hoare. A solid basis of facts was laid, 
which began to supersede the romances woven by Stuke- 
ley and others in the last century. Gradually more 
exact methods of search were introduced, and in the 
last thirty years Canon Greenwell has done much, and 
General Pitt Rivers has established a standard of ac- 
curate and complete work with perfect recording, which 
is the highest development of archaeological study. 
These and other researches have opened up the life of 
Neolithic man to us, and we see that he was much as 
modern man, if compared with the earlier stage of man 
as a hunter. The Neolithic man made pottery, spun and 
wove linen, constructed enormous earthworks both for 
defence and for burial, and S3^stematically made his 
tools of the best material he could obtain by combined 
labor in mining. The extensive flint -mines in chalk 
districts of England show long-continued labor; and 
the perfect form and splendid finish of many of the 
stone weapons show that skilled leisure could be devoted 
to them, and that aesthetic taste had been developed. 
The large camps prove that a thorough tribal organ- 

77 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ization prevailed, though probably confined to small 
clans. 

About the middle of the century a new type of dwelling 
began to be explored — the lake dwelling; this system 
of building towns upon piles in lakes had the great ad- 
vantage of protection from enemies and wild beasts, 
and a constant supply of food in the fish that could be 
hooked from the water below. Though such settle- 
ments were first found in the Swiss lakes, and explored 
there by Keller, they have since been found in France, 
Hungary, Italy, Holland, and the British Isles. The 
earlier settlements of this form belong to the Neolithic 
age, but only in central Europe. In these earliest lake 
dwellings weaving was known, and the cultivation of 
flax, grapes, and other fruit and corn; while the usual 
domestic animals were kept and cattle were yoked to the 
plough; pottery was abundant, and was often orna- 
mented with geometric patterns. The type of man was 
round-headed. Following the Neolithic lake dwellings 
came those of the Bronze age, and as the bronze objects 
are similar to those found in other kinds of dwellings 
we shall notice them in the Bronze age in general. The 
type of man was longer-headed than in the earlier lake 
settlement. The domestication of animals shows an ad- 
vance ; the horse was common, and the dog, ox, pig, and 
sheep were greatly improved. Pottery was better made 
and elaborately decorated, often with strips of tin-foil. 

The Bronze age marks a great step in man's history. 
In many countries the use of copper, hardened by arsenic 
or oxide, was common for long before the alloy of copper 
and tin was used. In other countries, where the use of 
metals was imported, copper only appears as a native 
imitation of the imported bronze. Hence there is a true 
age of copper in lands where the use of metals has grown. 
It must by no means be supposed that copper excluded 
the use of flint ; it was not until bronze became common 

78 



ARCHAEOLOGY 

that flint was disused. The existence of a Bronze age 
was first formulated, as distinct from a Stone age, about 
seventy years ago ; and the existence of a Copper age has 
been much disputed in the last thirty years, but has 
only been proved clearly ten years ago, in Egypt. 

In the eighteenth century the bronze weapons found 
in England were attributed to the Romans by some 
writers, though others, with more reason, argued that 
they were British. In the first year of the century 
began the comparative study of such weapons with 
reference to modern savage products. The develop- 
ment of the metal forms from stone prototypes was pointed 
out in 1816 ; the tracing out of the succession of the forms 
and the modes of use appeared in 1847. Further study 
cleared up the details, and within the last twenty years 
the full knowledge of the Bronze age in other countries 
has left no question as to the general facts of the sequence 
of its history. In each type of tool and weapon there 
appears first a very simple form imitated from the stone 
implements which were earlier used. Gradually the 
facilities given by the casting and toughness of the 
metal were used, and the forms were modified; orna- 
mentation was added, and thin work in embossed pat- 
terns gave the stiffness and strength which had been 
attained before by massive forms. The general types 
are the axe — first a plain slip of metal, later developed 
with a socket; then the chisel, gouge, sickle, knife, 
dagger, sword, spear, and shield; personal objects, as 
pins, necklets, bracelets, ear-rings, buttons, buckles, and 
domestic caldrons and cups. Most of these forms were 
found together, all worn out and broken, in the great 
bronze-founder's hoard at Bologna. 

Lastly in the prehistory of Europe comes the Iron age, 
which so much belongs to the historical period that we 
can best consider it in noticing separate countries. 

From the recent discoveries in Egypt we can gain 

79 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

some idea of the date of these periods. We ventured 
to assign about 10,000 B. C. for the rise of the Neolithic 
or polished-stone period (it may very possibly be earlier) ; 
the beginning of the use of copper may be placed about 
5000 B. C. ; the beginning of bronze was perhaps 3000 
or 2000 B. C, as its free use in Egypt is not till 1600 
B. C. ; and the use of iron beginning about 1000 B. C, 
probably in Armenia, spreading thence through Europe 
until it reached Italy, perhaps 700 years B. C, and Britain 
about 400 B. C. Such is the briefest outline of the greater 
part of the history of man, massed together in one gen- 
eral term of "prehistoric," before we reach the little 
fringe of history nearest to our own age. The whole 
of this knowledge results from the work of the century. 
We now turn to the historical ages of each of the prin- 
cipal countries, to review what advance has been made 
even where a basis of written record has come down to 
us, equally accessible in all recent times. 

EGYPT 

At the beginning of the century Egj T pt was a land 
of untouched and inexplicable mystery ; the hieroglyph- 
ics were wondered at, and puzzled over, without any 
idea of how they were to be read, whether as symbols 
or as letters. The history was entirely derived from 
the confused accounts of Greek authors, the lists re- 
maining of Manetho's history, written about 260 B. C, 
and the allusions in the Bible. The attempt to make 
everything fit to the ideas of the Greeks, and to make 
everything refer to the Biblical history, greatly retarded 
the understanding of the monuments, and is scarcely 
overcome yet. The first great step forward was when 
an inscription was found at Rosetta, in 1799, written 
in two methods, the monumental hieroglyphic and the 
popular demotic, along with a Greek version. By 1802 

So 



ARCHEOLOGY 

some groups of each writing had been translated. Young 
identified more signs, and Gell, by 1822, could suc- 
cessfully apportion three-quarters of the signs to the 
Greek words. The next step was to apply the modern 
Coptic language, descended from the ancient Egyptian, 
to the reading of the words. Gell had been doing so, 
but it needed a student of Coptic — Champollion — to 
carry this out thoroughly, as he did in 1821—32. Since 
then advance in reading has been only a matter of de- 
tail, not requiring any new principles. 

The knowledge of the art began with the admiration 
for the debased work of Roman times, the principal 
interest at the beginning of the century. Then the 
excavations among the Rameside monuments at Thebes, 
about 1820-30, took attention back to the age of 1500- 
1000 B. C. The work of Lepsius, and later of Mariette, 
from 1840-80, opened men's eyes to the splendid work 
of the early dynasties, about 4000-3000 B. C. And lastly 
the excavations of 1893-99 have fascinated scholars by 
a view of the rise of the civilization and the prehistoric 
period before 5000 B. C. 

Throughout the greater part of the century the archae- 
ology of Egypt lay untouched ; all attention was given 
to the language; and even Gardner Wilkinson's fine 
view of the civilization (1837) depended largely on Greek 
authors, and had no perspective of history in tracing 
changes and development. It is only in the last ten 
or fifteen years that any exact knowledge has been ac- 
quired about the rise and progress of the various arts 
of life ; this study now enables us to date the sculpture, 
metal work, pottery, and other art products as exactly as 
we can those of the Middle Ages. 

The view that we now have of the rise and decay of 

this great civilization and its connection with other 

lands is more complete and far-reaching than that of 

any other country. In the early undated age, before 

F 81 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the monarchy which began about 4800 B. C, a flourish- 
ing civilization was spread over upper Egypt. Towns 
were built of brick, as in later times ; clothing was made 
of woven linen and of leather ; pottery was most skilfully 
formed, without the potter's wheel, hand-made, yet of 
exquisite regularity and beauty of outline, while the 
variety of form is perhaps greater than in any other 
land; stone vases were made entirely by hand, without 
a lathe, as perfect in form as the pottery, and of the hard- 
est rocks, as diorite and granite; wood was carved for 
furniture; the art of colored glazing was common, and 
was even applied to glazing over large carvings in rock 
crystal; ornaments and beads were wrought of various 
stones and precious metals; ivory combs with carved 
figures adorned the hair; ivory spoons were used at 
the table; finely formed weapons and tools of copper 
served where strength was needful, while more useful 
were flint knives and lances which were wrought with a 
miraculous finish that has never been reached by any 
other people ; and games were played with dainty pieces 
made of hard stone and of ivory. But all this tasteful 
skill of 6000-5000 B. C. had its negative side; in the 
artistic copying of nature the mechanical skill of these 
people carried them a very little way ; their figures and 
heads of men and animals are strangely crude. And 
they had no system of writing, although marks were 
commonly used. They always buried the body doubled 
up, and often preserved the head and hands separately. 
Commerce was already active, and large rowing-galleys 
carried the wares of different countries around the Med- 
iterranean. These people were the same as the modern 
Kabyle, of Algeria, and akin to the South European 
races, but with some negro admixture. Our whole 
knowledge of this age has only been gained within the 
last five years. 

At about 5000 B. C. there poured into Egypt a very 

82 



ARCHEOLOGY 

different people, probably from the Red Sea. Having 
far more artistic taste, a commoner use of metals, a sys- 
tem of writing already begun, and a more organized 
government, these fresh people started a new civiliza- 
tion in Egypt; adopting readily the art and skill of the 
earlier race, they formed by their union the peculiar 
culture known as Egyptian, a type which lasted for four 
thousand years. The same foundation of a type is seen 
in the bodily structure; the early historical people had 
wider heads and more slender noses than the prehistoric, 
but from 4000 B. C. down to Roman times the form shows 
no change. 

From this union of two able races came one of the 
finest peoples ever seen, the Egyptians of the old king- 
dom, 4500-3500 B. C. Full of grand conceptions, ac- 
tive, able, highly mechanical, and yet splendid artists, 
they have left behind them the greatest masses of build- 
ing, the most accurate workmanship and exquisite 
sculptures in the grand pyramids and tombs of their 
cemeteries. They perfected the art of organizing com- 
bined labor on the immense public works. In all these 
respects no later age or country has advanced beyond 
this early ability. The moral character and ideas are 
preserved to us in the writings of these people; and we 
there read of the ability, reserve, steadfastness, and 
kindliness which we see reflected in the lifelike portrait- 
ure of that age. 

After a partial decay about 3000 B. C. this civilization 
blossomed out again nobly in the twelfth dynasty about 
2600 B. C. ; though the works of this age hardly reach 
the high level of the earlier times, yet they are finer than 
anything that followed them. At this period more con- 
tact with other countries is seen; both Syria and the 
Mediterranean were known, though imperfectly. 

To this succeeded another decadence, sealed by the 
disaster of the foreign invasion of the Hyksos. But 

83 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

this was thrown off by the rise of a third age of brilliance 
— the eighteenth dynasty, 1500 B. C. — which, though in- 
ferior to early times in its highest work, yet shines by 
the wide spread of art and luxury throughout the up- 
per classes. Magnificence became fashionable, and the 
lower classes contented themselves with most barefaced 
imitations of costly wares. Foreign islands came closely 
in contact with Egypt. The ships of the Syrian coast 
and Cyprus continually traded to and fro, exchanging 
silver, copper, and precious stones for the gold of Egypt. 
Greece also traded its fine pottery of the Mycenaean age 
for the showy necklaces of gold and the rings and amu- 
lets with names of Pharaohs. Egypt then dominated 
the shores of the western Mediterranean, the plains of the 
Euphrates, and the fertile Soudan. But this power and 
wealth led to disaster. Like Rome, later on, she could 
not resist the temptation to live on plunder; heavy trib- 
ute of corn was exacted, large numbers were employed 
in unproductive labor, and national disaster was the 
natural consequence. Egypt never recovered the do- 
minion or the splendor that were hers in this age. Of 
this period some slight notions are given us from literary 
remains in the Bible and Greek authors ; but archaeology 
is, so far, our only practical guide, as in the earlier ages. 
The great temples and monuments of the eighteenth- 
twentieth dynasties (1600-1100 B. C.) bear hundreds of 
historical inscriptions, the tombs are covered with scenes 
of private life, the burials and the ruins of towns fur- 
nish us with all the objects of daily use. This age is 
one of the fullest and richest in all history, and hardly 
any other is better known even in Greece or Italy. Yet 
all this has been brought to light in the century, and the 
knowledge of the foreign relations of Egypt is entirely 
the result of the last fifteen years. 

The final thousand years of the civilization of Egypt 
is checkered with many changes; sometimes independ- 

84 



ARCHAEOLOGY 

ent, as in the ages of Shishak of Necho, and of the Ptol- 
emies; at other times a prey to Ethiopians, Persians, 
Greeks, or Romans. Its arts and crafts show a constant 
decay, and there was but little left to resist the influence 
of Greek taste and design, which ran a debased course 
in the country. There was, however, a spread of man- 
ufactures and of cheap luxuries into lower and lower 
classes; and the wealth of the country accumulated 
under the beneficent rule of the earlier Ptolemies (300- 
200 B. C.) 

The principal discoveries about these later ages have 
been in the papyri, which have been largely found during 
the last twenty years. The details of the government 
and life of the country in the Ptolemaic (305-30 B. C.) 
and Roman (30 B. C— 640 A. D.) periods have been cleared 
up; and many prizes of classical literature have also 
been recovered. The archaeology of the Middle Ages 
in Egypt has also been studied. Many of the Arabic 
buildings have been recently cleaned and put in good 
condition, and the splendid collection of manuscripts 
in Cairo has opened a view of the beautiful art of the 
thirteenth— fifteenth centuries so closely akin to what 
was done in Europe at the same time. 

Egypt is, then, before all other lands, the country of 
archaeology. A continuous history of seven thousand 
years, with abundant remains of every period to illus- 
trate it, and a rich prehistoric age before that, give com- 
pleteness to the study and the fullest value to archaeo- 
logical research. 

MESOPOTAMIA 

The valley of the Euphrates might well rival that of 
the Nile if it were scientifically explored, but unhappily 
all the excavation has been done solely with a view to 
inscription and sculpture, and no proper record has been 

85 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

made, nor have any towns been examined, the only work 
being in palaces and temples. 

The earliest study on the ground was by Rich (1818-20), 
who gathered some few sculptures and formed an idea 
of Assyrian art. The French Consul, Botta, excavated 
Khorsabad (founded 700 B. C.) in 1834-35, an d Layard 
excavated Nimrud in 1845-47; these were both As- 
syrian sites. The older Babylonian civilization was 
touched at Erech by Loftus, in 1849-52; and this age 
has attracted the most important excavations made since, 
at Tello by Sarzec (1876-81), and at Nippur by Peters 
and Haynes, of Philadelphia, during the last few years. 

The cuneiform characters were absolutely unex- 
plained until Grotefend, in 1800, resolved several of 
them by taking inscriptions which he presumed might 
contain names of Persian kings and comparing them 
alongside of the known names; thus — without a single 
fixed point to start from — he tried a series of hypotheses 
until he found one which fitted the facts. Bournouf 
(in 1836) and Lassen (1836-44) rectified and completed 
the alphabet. But the cuneiform signs were used to 
write many diverse languages, as the Roman alphabet 
is used at present; and the short Persian alphabet was 
only a fraction of the great syllabary of six hundred signs 
used for Assyrian. Rawlinson had independently made 
out the Persian alphabet, using the Zend and San- 
skrit for the language. He next, from the trilingual 
Behistun inscription in Persian, Assyrian, and Vannic, 
resolved the long Assyrian syllabary, using Hebrew 
for the language. Since then other more obscure lan- 
guages written in cuneiform have been worked with 
more or less success; the most important is the Tura- 
nian language, used by the earlier inhabitants of Baby- 
lonia before the Semitic invasion; this is recorded by 
many syllabaries and dictionaries, and translations 
compiled bv the literary Semitic kings. 

86 



ARCHEOLOGY 

The general view of the civilization which has been 
obtained by these labors of the century shows it to have 
been more important to the world than any other. Cunei- 
form was the literary script of the world for at least six 
thousand years, the only medium of writing from the 
Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. The Babylonian 
culture was almost certainly the source of the oldest 
present civilization — that of China. And the arts were 
developed probably even earlier than in Egypt. The 
first inhabitants were called Sumirian (or river folk) 
in distinction from the Accadian (or highland) people, 
who came from Elam down into the Euphrates valley, 
bringing with them the use of writing. Their earliest 
writing was of figure symbols (like the Egyptian and 
Hittite) ; but as in the valley clay tablets were the only 
material for writing, the figures became gradually trans- 
formed into groups of straight lines and spots impressed 
on the clay; hence the signs were formalized into what 
we call cuneiform. The Semitic invaders were using 
cuneiform characters by about 3000 B. C. 

The early civilization was intensely religious, the 
main buildings being the temples, which were placed 
on enormous piles of brick-work. The sculpture was 
at a high level in the time of Naram-Sinn, about 3750 
B. C. ; and yet below his ruins at Nippur there are no 
less than thirty -five feet depth of earlier ruins, which 
must extend back to 6000 or 7000 B. C. In early times 
stone implements were used alongside of copper and 
bronze, as we find in Egypt 4000 B. C. Pottery was 
well made, and also reliefs in terra -cotta. Personal 
ornaments of engraved gems and gold - work were 
common. 

The main landmarks in the later time of this civiliza- 
tion are the Elamite invasion of Kudur-nan-khundi 
(2280 B. C.) which upset the Semitic rulers, and the 
Assyrian invasion of Tiglath-Adar (1270 B. a), after 

87 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

which interest centres in the Ass3^rian kingdom and its 
development of the Mesopotamian culture which it bor- 
rowed. The main buildings of the Assj^rian kings 
were their enormous palaces, the mass of which was of 
unbaked bricks, faced with alabaster slabs; such were 
the works of Assurnazir-pal (Nimrud, 880 B. C), Sargon 
(Khorsabad, 710 B. C), Sennacherib and Assurbani- 
pal (Kouyunjik, 700 B. C.) The later, Assyrian, form 
of the civilization was to the earlier Chaldean much 
what Rome was to Greece, a rather clumsy borrower, 
who laboriously preserved the literature and art. Some 
of the Assyrian sculpture of animals is, however, per- 
haps unsurpassed for vivid action. The systematic 
libraries, containing copies of all the older literature for 
general study, were most creditable, though the Assyrian 
himself composed nothing better than chronicles. Nearty 
all that we possess of Babylonian religion, and much of 
the history, is in the copies scrupulously made from the 
ancient tablets by the Assyrian scribes, who noted every 
defect in the original with critical fidelity. 

The Mesopotamian civilization has left its mark on 
the modern world. Its religion greatly influenced He- 
brew, and thence Christian, thought, the psalms, for 
instance, being a Babylonian form of piety. Its science 
fixed the signs of the zodiac, the months of the year, 
the days of the week, and the division of the circle 
in degrees, all of which are now universal. And its art, 
carried by the Phoenicians, was copied by the Greeks 
and Etruscans, and thus passed on into modern design. 

SYRIA 

The knowledge of Palestine was but slight, and of 
northern Syria nothing to speak of, a century ago. 
Travellers with some scientific ability, such as Robinson 
(1838 and 1852), De Saulcy (1853), and Van de Velde 



ARCHAEOLOGY 

(1854), greatly extended our view and led up to the splen- 
did survey by the Palestine Exploration Fund (1866 
and on), which exhausted the surface study of the land. 
The more archaeological work of excavation was begun at 
Jerusalem (1867-70), and resumed (1892-99) at Lachish, 
Jerusalem, etc. The topographical results are all im- 
portant, and leave nothing to be done until excavation 
can be freely applied ; and the small amount of digging 
yet done has fixed the varieties of pottery back to 2000 
B. C. and given some early architecture. But the ruins 
of Syria, and indeed of Turkey in general, are practically 
yet untouched. The discovery (1868) of the inscription 
of Mesha, King of Moab (896 B. C), opened a new pros- 
pect of research which cannot yet be entered upon. In 
the north of Sj'ria nothing has been done except the 
German work at Singerli, from which came an Ara- 
mean inscription of about 740 B. C. And in the south 
a large number of early inscriptions of the Arabian 
dynasties, reaching back some centuries B. C, have 
been copied ; but there, also, excavation is impos- 
sible. 

The main new light from Syria has been on the Hittite 
power. Burckhardt, in 181 2, had noticed a new kind 
of hieroglyph at Hamath. After several ineffective 
copies, Wright made casts of the stones in 1872. Several 
other such inscriptions have been found, and from these 
and the Egyptian and Assyrian references to the Hittites 
we now realize that they were a northern people, with 
a great capital on the Euphrates, at Karkhemish, and 
ruling over nearly all Syria and Asia Minor. Little 
has yet been fixed about the writing; a few signs are 
read and some have passed into the Cypriote alphabet. 
A striking proof of the spread of Babylonian culture 
is seen in the tablets found in Egypt at Tel-el- Amarna 
in 1887, which show that all the correspondence between 
Egypt and Syria in the fifteenth century B. C. was car- 

89 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ried on in cuneiform. These hundreds of letters give 
a vivid picture of life in Syria at that early date. 

GREECE 

The revival of interest in Greek civilization was at 
first purely literary, and remained so during two or 
three centuries. But during the last century various 
travellers and residents abroad made collections which 
awoke an interest in the art; and though most of these 
collectors were content with merely showy sculpture, 
greatly restored and falsified for the market, yet some — 
such as Hamilton — took a real archaeological interest in 
the unearthing and collecting of ancient art. The condi- 
tion of study at the end of the eighteenth century was that 
many private men of wealth had bought large quantities 
of sculpture which was but little understood, and looked 
on more from a decorative than a scientific point of view, 
while there were the beginnings of a serious appreciation 
of it which had been just laid down by Winckelmann. 

The nineteenth century opened with a grand work of 
publishing the principal treasures of classical art in Eng- 
land, which was finally issued in 1809 by Payne, Knight, 
and Townley ; this marks the highest point of the dilet- 
tante collecting spirit, which was soon eclipsed by truer 
knowledge. Hitherto the best sculpture had hardly been 
known but at second hand through Roman copies; a 
closer acquaintance began with the travels of Dodwell, 
Gell, and Leake, all in the first decade of the century. 
The free opening of the British Museum, in 1805, and the 
accumulation there of all the best collections within the 
first quarter of the century, also served to educate a 
public taste. The first struggle of scientific and artistic 
knowledge against the dilettante spirit was over the 
Elgin marbles; by 1816 they were accepted as the mas- 
terpieces which all later criticism has proved them to be. 

90 



ARCHAEOLOGY 

The iEginetan and Phigaleian sculptures, brought to 
Munich and London, helped also to show the nobility of 
early Greek art; so that the last two generations have 
had a canon of taste to rely upon, the value of which 
cannot be overestimated. 

Following on this noble foundation, other collectors 
worked in Greece and Asia Minor, and the British Mu- 
seum profited by the labors of Burgon, Fellows, and Wood- 
house between 1840 and i860. The diplomatically sup- 
ported work of Newton on the Mausoleum (1857-58), and 
Wood at Ephesus (1863-75), filled out our knowledge of 
the middle period of Greek art (350 B. C). Compara- 
tively little has been done since then by England, but 
the activity of the Germans at Olympia has given us 
the only original masterpiece that is known — the Hermes 
of Praxiteles (350 B. C), and their work at Pergamon re- 
vealed the great altar belonging to the later age (180 B.C.). 
The excavations at Athens (in 1886) have produced the 
impressive statues dedicated to Athene about 520 B. C, 
which reveal the noble rise of Attic sculpture. But at- 
tention during the last quarter-century has been largely 
fixed upon the earlier ages. The discoveries of Schlie- 
mann at Hissarlik (Troy, 1870-82), Mycenae (1876), 
Orchomenos (1880-81), and Tiryns (1884), opened a new 
world of thought and research. Though at first bitterly 
attacked, it is now agreed that these discoveries show us 
the civilization of Greece between 2000 and 1000 B. C. 
Lastly, during ten years past Egypt has provided the 
solid chronology for prehistoric Greece by discoveries of 
trade between the two countries. 

We can now very briefly estimate the present position 
of our knowledge as gained during the century. Set- 
ting aside the early foreign pottery found in Egypt, which 
belongs probably to Greece or Italy at 5000 and 3000 B.C., 
we first touch a civilized city in the lowest town of Troy, 
where metal was scarcely yet in use, which is certainly 

91 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

before 2000 and probably about 3000 B. C. in date. 
Succeeding that is the finely built second Troy, rich in 
gold vases and ornaments, which — though mistaken by 
Schliemann for the Homeric Troy — must yet be long be- 
fore that, probably before 2000 B. C. After the burning 
of that come three other rebuildings before we reach the 
town of the age of Mycenae, about 1500 B. C. Of this, 
which was in Greece the climax of the prehistoric civil- 
ization, there are the splendid treasures found at Mycenae, 
the magnificent domed tombs, the abundance of fine 
jewelry and metal-work, of beautiful pottery and glazed 
ornament. To this age belong the great palaces of 
Mycenae, Tiryns, Athens, and other hill fortresses, of 
which hardly more than the plans can now be traced. 
And it is this civilization which traded eagerly with 
Egypt, exchanging the valued manufactures of each 
country. This period was at its full bloom from 1500— 
1200 B. C, and began to decay by 1100 B. C, this dating 
being given by the contact with Egypt. 

This natural decadence of art in Greece was hastened 
by the invasion of the barbarous Dorians about 1000 
B. C. Art, however, was by no means extinguished, 
but only repressed by the troubles of the age; and Ath- 
ens, which was not conquered by the Dorians, was the 
main centre of the revival of the arts. Other examples 
of such a history are familiar in Egypt (after the Hyksos 
invasion) and in Italy (after the Lombards), where 
earlier abilities revive and bloom afresh when vigorous 
invaders become united to an artistic stock. After the 
centuries of warfare a quieter age allowed the growth of 
fine arts again in the seventh century B. C, largely in- 
fluenced by Egyptian and Assyrian work at second 
hand, through the Greek settlements in Cyprus and 
Egypt. By 600 B. C. definite types of sculpture were 
started, and a course was begun which only ended in 
the fall of classical civilization. The century before 

92 



ARCHEOLOGY 

the Persian invasion, in 480 B. C, was one of rapid devel- 
opment; and in sculpture and vase-painting we see that 
this century carried forward the arts to technical per- 
fection and the highest power of expression. Immediate- 
ly after the Persian wars came the supreme works of 
Pheidias and Myron, most familiar in the Parthenon 
and the Discobolus; and in vase-painting comes the re- 
versal from vases drawn in black on a red ground to the 
blocking out of the ground in black, leaving the figure 
in red, thus giving far greater scope to the filling in of 
finely drawn detail. The civilization of Athens was 
also at its height in this age, under Pericles, and the 
minor arts received their most refined and perfect treat- 
ment. After this comes nothing but ripening to decay. 
It must always be remembered that we have but very 
few examples of original work of the great artists. Near- 
ly all the actual marbles preserved are copies made in 
later times, which show little of the delicacy of the origi- 
nal ; and the few original marbles that remain are mostly 
of unknown subjects by unknown men. The great work 
in Greek archaeology during the last fifty years has been 
comparing the records of ancient art (in Pliny, Pau- 
sanias, etc.) with the remaining sculptures, critically 
assigning the various types of statues to their celebrated 
originals, and thus forming some idea of the real history 
of Greek art. 

From these studies, full of detail and controversy, 
we may briefly sum up the characteristics of the principal 
artists and their imitators. At about 440 B. C. Pheidias 
showed in the Parthenon the highest expression of divine 
and mythic forms, in a simple and heroic style which 
was never equalled. Half a century later Polykleitos 
followed a more human expression, using motives (as 
in the Doryphoros), but yet portraying an abstract hu- 
manity. By 330 B. C. Praxiteles brought the expression 
of moods to his works, graceful, animated, and with a 

93 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

full ripeness, as in the Hermes of Olympia, or the Faun. 
Skopas, slightly later, marked his work by his great 
vigor and strong personality. This was the second 
turning-point, when ripeness passed into decay; and in 
Lysippos there is mere vivid naturalism and an im- 
pressionist manner without much soul or thought, as 
in his Apoxyomenos, about 330 B. c. After this mere 
triviality and genre subjects are usual, portraiture is 
a common aim, and dignit}^ was vainty striven for in 
colossal size. The glorification of showing dead and 
vanquished enemies is seen in the Dying Gaul and fig- 
ures of slain foes at Pergamon. Later on, about 180 
B. C, we see the violent, complicated, and straining ac- 
tion of the figures around the great altar of Pergamon, 
which also appears in the groups of the Laocoon and 
Farnese Bull. In the Graeco-Roman age a conscious 
artificiality took the place of life and expression, as we 
see in the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus di Medici, and 
the Farnese Hercules. Art was saved in the first cen- 
tury A. D. by the devotion of portraiture, which gave a 
sense of reality and conviction which is entirely absent, 
in the imaginative works. Lastly, a painstaking study 
and admiration of earlier works led, under the wealthy 
patronage of Hadrian (130 A. D.), to an eclectic revival 
which was wholly artificial, and passed away within 
a generation. We have fixed on sculpture as the most 
complete expression of Greek art; in other directions 
there is neither enough material nor enough research 
to give us a connected view. Not a single town, hardly 
a single house, in Greece has been excavated ; there is 
no consecutive knowledge of the ordinary products and 
objects of life; and there is very little recorded of the 
discoveries of the tombs. The artistic interest of the 
sculpture and architecture has starved other branches 
of archaeology, and for Greece more remains to be done 
than for some less celebrated lands. 

94 



ARCHEOLOGY 



ITALY 



The interest in Italy at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century was mainly for the sake of its second-hand ver- 
sion of Greek art, and for the architecture and painting 
of the Renaissance. On the contrar} 7 , now the objects 
from Greece itself have far eclipsed the Italian copies, 
and the interest lies in the early Italian civilization and 
its purely Roman derivatives ; while modern taste values 
the mediaeval art of Italy far from the bastard products 
of the florid age which followed. The first detailed 
studies in Italy were those on Pompeii, especially by 
Gell (1817), which made that debased style very popular, 
and paved the way for appreciation of better work. The 
various isolated discoveries of Etruscan tombs were 
summed up in the admirable work of Dennis (1848), 
which presented a general view of that civilization which 
has not been superseded. The earlier Italic culture has 
been examined in many places where accidental discov- 
eries have revealed it during the latter half of the nine- 
teenth century, and especially in the systematic work of 
Zannoni, at Bologna (1870-75), and of Orsi, lately, in 
Sicily. The history of the city of Rome has been al- 
most rewritten in the last thirt} 7 years owing to the great 
changes of the new government ; these have been largely 
worked by Lanciani, and recorded b}' him and Middleton. 
The view of Italian history at present begins in the Stone 
age, which has been well studied, and has links with the 
later periods, as in the general use of black pottery. 
The earliest metal objects are very simple blades of dag- 
gers, found in graves, mingled with flint arrow-heads 
and knives. The admirable Italian plan of preserving 
whole burials undisturbed in museums enables us to see 
these graves complete in the Kircherian Museum. A 
special branch of the early Bronze age life was the sys- 
tem of lake dwellings (natural or artificially water girt), 

95 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

which abound in the northern Italian lakes and over 
the plain of Lombardy. These towns ("terra mare'') 
are arranged on a rectangular plan, and form the earliest 
stage of many of the present cities. The full develop- 
ment of the Bronze age civilization seems to have been 
later than in Greece, at about 800 B. C, to which belong 
the great discoveries of tombs, weapons, and tools at 
Bologna, and the cemetery of Falerii. 

Upon all the native Italic civilization came an entirely 
different influence from the immigrant Etruscan. Tra- 
ditionally coming from Asia Minor, he brought art 
and religion which had no relation to the Italic. The 
earliest Etruscan paintings are strongly northern in 
style, influenced by north European feeling (Veii). But 
soon the Etruscan borrowed largely from other races, 
from the Greek mainly, but also from Assyria and Eg3 7 pt. 
Thus the fascinating problem in Italy is to distinguish 
the various sources of Italic, Etruscan, Grseco-Etruscan, 
Oriental-Etruscan, and pure Greek, which are found in 
all degrees of combination before Roman times, and 
which can still be traced through the Roman age. The 
characteristics of Etruscan taste are: (1) The extraneous 
objects and figures, such as rows of pendants to a metal 
vase, monstrous heads standing out from a bowl, and 
statuettes placed for handles; (2) in forms of vases and 
furniture, the combination of manj'' different parts and 
curves which never form a whole design; (3) and in 
sculpture the large round head and staring eyes. In 
general, an air of clumsy adaptation by a race deficient in 
originality. The glory of the Etruscan was his engi- 
neering, which he handed as a legacy to Rome. Strange 
to say, although thousands of Etruscan inscriptions 
are known, and many words are translated, yet the lan- 
guage is sealed to us, and none of the many attempts 
to read it has succeeded. The scientific study of Etrus- 
can tombs has been well followed lately, as shown in 

96 



ARCHAEOLOGY 

the Florence Museum, where a separate room is devoted 
to each city. 

In the south of Italy Greek art prevailed, and many 
of the finest works belong to this civilization. The 
Greek in Italy had rather different ideals to those of 
Greece ; he started more from the level of Polykleitos and 
Praxiteles than from the severe age ; his favorite type is 
that of youth and adolescence, never of maturity. The 
grace and feeling of such bronze statues as the Hermes 
and so-called Sappho of Herculaneum are peculiar to 
southern Italy. And when the Greek artist penetrated 
north and allied himself with the mechanical skill of 
the Etruscan, such splendid work was done as the Orator 
of Sanguineto. 

Rome in the earlier centuries was an Italic town which 
came under Etruscan influence as Tuscany was con- 
quered. But from the age of foreign conquest in the 
first century B. C, Greek art in a debased form ruled over 
all else, and ran into utter degradation in the third cen- 
tury A. D. It was this art that the power of Rome spread 
around the whole Mediterranean, from Palmyra to Brit- 
ain, and is the parent of most modern decoration. But 
in the great reconstruction of the empire under Diocle- 
tian the debased Greek taste was mostly shaken off, and 
Rome went back to the old Italic-Etruscan style and mo- 
tives. The statues have the round heads and staring 
eyes of old Etruria; the taste for quaint accessories, 
such as lions supporting objects, came back and passed 
into mediaeval art, and the exaggerated, lengthy forms 
of men and animals reappeared. 

Of the Christian period De Rossi's work in the cata- 
combs has given a firm base of facts for the third to the 
sixth century A. D., the actual tomb and bodj^ of Saint 
Cecilia being the most striking result. The later Ro- 
man and mediaeval age in Italy is full of interest, but 
in that — as in the rest of mediaeval Europe — research 
G 97 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

has been mainly on architecture and objects which 
are not the result of excavation. 



INDIA 

The Hindus have never been chronologists or historians, 
and their great Sanskrit literature tells practically noth- 
ing about the rise of Buddhism, the invasion of Alexan- 
der, or the spread of civilization in Indo-China. All be- 
fore the Islamic conquest in the tenth century A. D. is in a 
mist of Puranic mythology. Here, then, more than in 
other countries, archaeology has restored the history, 
and done so entirely within the nineteenth century. 

The existence of Sanskrit literature was revealed to 
the West by Sir William Jones at the end of the last cen- 
tury, and this gave scope to Oriental scholars, while an- 
tiquities only interested the collector. But serious ex- 
ploration was led by Prinsep, whose decipherment of 
the Asoka inscriptions in 1837, which ranks with the 
achievements of Champollion and Rawlinson, gave the 
key to a mass of inscriptions. 

His assistant, Cunningham, excavated many sites 
and collected coins, being head of the Archaeological Sur- 
vey from 1 86 1 to 1885. Fergusson was the historian of 
Indian architecture; Burgess has published the cave- 
temples in west and south India ; Sewell in Madras and 
Fiihrer in the northwest have excavated and explored, 
and a few native pundits have been educated to such re- 
search. The government, in financial difficulty, has 
withdrawn from the work, but the congress of Oriental- 
ists in 1897 resolved to establish an Indian exploration 
fund. 

Inscriptions abound in India, on copper plate, stone 
pillars, and native rock. Those in Sanskrit, or mod- 
ern vernaculars, are records of land grants or local 
dynasties. The oldest — in two different alphabets (of 

98 



ARCHAEOLOGY 

Semitic origin) — are the famous edicts of Asoka (third 
century B. C), who has been called The Buddhist Con- 
stantine. He placed these monuments of his power and 
religion around his frontiers of northern India ; but their 
meaning was forgotten until Prinsep's decipherment. 
The Hindus seem to have a coinage of stamped silver 
plate before Alexander; but regular coinage begins in 
the Bactrian kingdoms (200 B. C.-200 A. D.), with Greek 
and native inscriptions. Since then the coinage is con- 
tinuous, and invaluable for history. No stone building 
or sculpture is older than Alexander (327 B. C), or cer- 
tainly earlier than Asoka (264-233 B. C). Greek in- 
fluence is plain in the Punjab, but native style is seen in 
the cave-temples. The richest results have been from 
the mounds, some of which are ruins of forts or palaces, 
but the more important are the stupas, lofty domes erected 
two to one thousand years ago to enshrine Buddhist 
relics. These domes are surrounded with sculptured 
reliefs of scenes in the life of Buddha, and are often dated 
by inscriptions. From one lately opened the Buddha 
relic has been sent to the King of Siam, the only Buddhist 
king. Much has been done by the government in pub- 
lishing and providing casts and photographs ; but India 
yet needs a scientific archaeologist to record details with 
the accuracy demanded by modern research. 

AMERICA 

Archaeological work in the United States and in Central 
America was begun by Squier about the middle of the 
century, and the attention thus drawn to the subject has 
borne fruit in the more accurate and scientific explora- 
tions connected with the surveying and geological de- 
partments, and, above all, those of the Smithsonian 
Bureau of Ethnology. The names of Whitney, Wright, 
Cyrus Thomas, Holmes, Fowke, Mindeleff, and others, 
L. of C. 99 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

will be familiar to all American readers by their work 
of the last twenty years, and need no introducing here. 

The earliest remains of man in America — or perhaps 
in the world — are those beneath the great lava beds of 
California; since those were deposited the rivers have 
cut their beds through two thousand to four thousand 
feet of lava rock, implying an erosion during tens, or 
perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years. But little 
can be assigned, however, with any certainty to a date 
before the Christian era, though mounds of refuse on 
both ocean shores may probably belong to an age before 
any human history. 

The most important studies have been those on the 
highest civilization of the continent, that of Central 
America. The destroying Spaniards preserved but little 
of native record, except incidentally, and the first col- 
lector of Aztec manuscripts was Benaduci (1736), of 
whose treasures but an eighth survived his imprison- 
ments and persecutions, one of the greatest disasters 
to history. The first great publication of manuscripts 
was the magnificent work of Lord Kingsborough (1830) ; 
and almost at the same time appeared Prescott's his- 
tory. Though the later researches have shown that 
the land was divided into many small kingdoms, rather 
than under one power, as Prescott supposed, yet his ac- 
count of the calendar and chronology of the Aztecs 
has been verified and added to, and far more has been 
done in reading the manuscripts than he supposed pos- 
sible. Aubin, after years of work in Mexico, brought 
to Europe manuscripts of an entirely new kind, show- 
ing a fully developed system of phonetic writing, which 
he has largely deciphered with success, having analyzed 
over one hundred syllabic values correctly. 

One of the most complete studies has been that of 
the Mayan Quiche peoples, and especially of the Mayans 
of Yucatan. In 1864 Landa's work on Yucatan (written 

100 



ARCHEOLOGY 

1566) was rediscovered, and the account of the calendar 
has sufficed to enable Goodman to discover the meaning 
of a very large number of signs (1897); these enable 
the numerical documents to be translated, and show that 
a period of as much as eight thousand years was dealt 
with by the Mayans, perhaps belonging to mythical ages. 
The alphabetic signs of Landa have proved useless so 
far, and Goodman even disbelieves in any record except 
that of numbers. Seler has shown the identical origin 
of the signs used by Aztecs and Mayans for the days 
and months. Little had been done to make known 
these remains until the recent explorations, casts, and 
publications of Maudsley, who has worked magnifi- 
cently for seventeen years at Copan, Palenque, and 
Chichen-Itza ; these, however, are but three of innu- 
merable cities of Guatemala and Yucatan that need 
exploration. 

In New Mexico the many ruins from the Colorado 
to the Rio Grande have been proved to resemble those 
of the modern Pueblo Indians, and to have none of the 
characteristics of Central American architecture; there 
are no sculptures, and the rock inscriptions are too primi- 
tive to be interpreted. Nothing points to an Aztec oc- 
cupation, and probably the ancestors of the present 
people were the builders. 

The innumerable earthworks of the Mississippi valley 
were formerly supposed to belong to some vanished 
race. And the view that they were connected with the 
Central American civilization is favored by the pyramid 
mound, which was hardly known otherwise, and by 
the excellence of the minor sculpture. But there are 
great differences between the two civilizations. The 
mound-builders were far inferior in metal-working, and 
their burial customs are peculiar. The use of materials 
from both east and west coasts shows an extensive com- 
merce. The best summing up of the researches is that 

101 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

by Prof. Cyrus Thomas, after his extensive excava- 
tions. He concludes that the remains of the mound- 
builders show no great antiquity ; that they were formed 
by tribes like the existing Indians; that the builders 
were of the same culture as were the Indians when dis- 
covered ; that such mounds continued to be made and used 
for burial during the European period, and that the 
principal builders were the Cherokees. 

It will be seen now how totally our view of man's 
history has been changed by the study of archaeologj^, 
and how fundamentally this science affects our ideas 
of the past and our expectations for the future of our 
race. The main outlines have been dimly seen; but in 
every country the greater part yet remains to be done, 
and in Turkey, Persia, and China most important civili- 
zations are as yet quite untouched by exploration. The 
new century will no doubt see a harvest from these 
lands; and it is to be hoped that what yet remains in 
the safe keeping of the earth may be found by able men, 
who will preserve it for instruction and enable posterity 
to trace the fortunes of our species. 

[India and America are here treated with the assist- 
ance of Mr. J. S. Cotton and Mr. D. Maclver.] 

W. M. Flinders Petrie. 



ASTRONOMY 



I 



ASTRONOMY 

N looking back over a century's work in the oldest of 
the sciences, one is struck not only by the enormous 
advance that has been made in those branches of the 
science dealing with the motions of the heavenly bodies 
which were cultivated at least eight thousand years ago 
by early dwellers in the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, and 
Euphrates, but with the fact that during the century that 
has just passed away a perfectly new science of astrono- 
my arose. By annexing physics and chemistry astrono- 
mers now study the motions of the particles of which all 
celestial bodies are composed ; a new molecular astrono- 
my has now been firmly established side by side with 
the old molar astronomy which formerly alone occupied 
the thoughts of star-gazers. 

Along this new line our knowledge has advanced 
by leaps and bounds, and the results already obtained 
in expanding and perfecting man's views of nature m 
all her beauty and immensity are second to none which 
have been garnered during the last hundred years. 

THE POSITION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY 

It may be well before attempting to obtain a glimpse 
of recent progress that we should try to grasp the state 
of the science at the time when the nineteenth century 
was about to dawn, and this, perhaps, can be best ac- 
complished by seeing what men were working at this 
period, at which the greatest activity was to be found 

105 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

in Germany; there was no permanent observatory in 
the southern hemisphere or in the United States. 

First and foremost among the workers — he has, in 
fact, been described as "the greatest of modern astron- 
omers " — was William Herschel, a German domiciled in 
England. In the year 1773 he hired a telescope, and 
with this small instrument he obtained his first glimpses 
of the rich fields of exploration open in the skies. From 
that time onward he had one fixed purpose in his mind, 
which was to obtain as intimate knowledge as possible 
of the construction of the heavens. 

To do this, of course, great optical power was necessary, 
and such was his energy that, as large instruments 
were not to be obtained at any price, he set to work and 
made them himself. 

Herschel presented the beginning of the nineteenth 
century not only with a definite idea of the constitution 
of the stellar system, based on a connected body of facts 
and deductions from facts, as gleaned through his tele- 
scopes, but observations without number in many fields. 
He discovered a new planet, Uranus, and several satel- 
lites of the planets; published catalogues of nebulae; 
established the gravitational bond between many " double 
stars," and carried on observations of the sun, then sup- 
posed to be a habitable globe. What Herschel did for 
observational astronomy and deductions therefrom, La- 
place did for the furtherance of our knowledge concern- 
ing the exact motions of the bodies comprising the solar 
system. Newton had long before announced that gravi- 
tation was universal, and Laplace brought together in- 
vestigations undertaken to determine the validity of 
this law. These were given to the world in his wonderful 
book on Celestial Mechanics, the first volumes of which 
appeared in 1799. 

A survey of the work of these two great astronomers 
gives one an idea of what was going on in observational 

106 



ASTRONOMY 

and mathematical astronomy at the beginning of the 
century. 

The study was now destined to make rapid strides, 
as not only were new optical instruments — some de- 
signed for special purposes — introduced, new mathe- 
matical processes applied, fresh fields for research opened 
up, but the number of workers was considerably aug- 
mented by the increased means available; so much so, 
indeed, that the first astronomical periodical was found- 
ed by Von Zach in 1800 to facilitate intercommunica- 
tions between the observers. 

The first evening of the nineteenth century (January 
1, 1 801) augured well for progress. It had long been 
thought that all the members of the solar system had 
not as yet been discovered, and there was a very notable 
gap between the planets Mars and Jupiter, indicated by 
Bode's law. Observers were organized to make a thor- 
ough search for the missing planet, portions of the sky 
being divided between them for minute examination. 
It fell to the Italian observer, Piazzi, to discover a small 
body which was moving in an orbit between these two 
planets on the date named. The century thus began 
with a sensation, and because the new body, which was 
named "Ceres," was not of sufficient size to be accepted 
as the "missing planet/' the idea was suggested that 
perhaps it was a fragment of a larger planet that had 
been blown to pieces in the past. 

An opportunity here arose for mathematical astron- 
omy to come to the help of the observer, for Ceres soon 
was lost in the solar rays, and in order to rediscov- 
er it, after it had passed conjunction, an approximate 
knowledge of its path and future position was neces- 
sary. 

With the then existing methods of computation of 
orbits it was imperative to have numerous measured 
positions to use as data for the calculation. The scanty 

107 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

data available in the case of Ceres were not sufficient for 
the application of the method. The occasion discovered 
a man, one of the greatest mathematicians of the nine- 
teenth century, Karl Frederick Gauss, who, although 
only twenty-five years of age, undertook the solution of 
the problem by employing a system which he had de- 
vised, known as "the method of least squares," which 
enabled him to obtain a most probable result from a given 
set of observations. 

This, with a more general method of orbit computa- 
tion, also elaborated by himself, was sufficient to enable 
him to calculate future positions of Ceres, and on the an- 
niversary of the original discovery, Olbers, another great 
pioneer in orbit calculations, found the planet in very 
nearly the position assigned by Gauss. So great was 
the curiosity regarding the other portions of the planet, 
which was supposed to have been shattered, that nu- 
merous observers at once commenced to search after 
other fragments. 

These were the actualities of 1801 and thereabouts; 
but the seed of much future work was sown. Kant and 
Laplace had already occupied themselves with theories 
as to the world formation, and spectrum analysis as ap- 
plied to the heavenly bodies may be said to have been 
started by Wollaston's observations of dark lines in the 
solar spectrum in 1802. Fraunhofer was then a boy at 
school. In the same year the first photographic prints 
were produced by Wedgewood and Davy. 

OBSERVATORIES 

It has been stated that at the beginning of the century 
there were no permanent observatories either in the 
southern hemisphere or in the United States. The end 
of the century finds us with two hundred observatories 
all told, of which fourteen are south of the equator and 

108 



ASTRONOMY 

forty-seven in the United States, among which latter are 
the best-equipped and most active in the world. 

The observatory of Parramatta was the first estab- 
lished (1821) in the southern hemisphere. This was 
followed by that at the Cape of Good Hope in 1829. Of 
the more modern southern observatories from which the 
best work has come we may mention Cordova, the seat 
of Gould's important investigations, established in 1868, 
and Arequipa, a dependency of Harvard, whence the 
spectra of the southern stars have been secured, erected 
still more recently (1881). 

I believe, but I do not know, that the large number of 
American observatories have radiated from Cincinnati, 
where, in consequence of eloquent appeals, both by voice 
and pen, from Mitchell, then professor of astronomy, 
an observatory was commenced in 1845. There can be 
no doubt that at the present moment, with the numerous 
well-equipped and active observatories, and the careful 
and thorough teaching established side by side with 
them, which enables numberless students to use the 
various instruments, the United States, in matters as- 
tronomical, fills the position occupied by Germany at the 
beginning of the century. 

In Europe special observatories have been established 
at Meudon, Kensington, and Potsdam, so that new as- 
trophysical inquiries may be undertaken without inter- 
fering with the prosecution or extension of the impor- 
tant meridional work carried on at Paris, Greenwich, and 
Berlin. A large proportion of the observations made 
by the Lick and Yerkes observatories in the United 
States has been astrophysical. 

One of the special inquiries committed to the charge 
of the Solar Physics Observatory at Kensington at its 
establishment by the British government had relation to 
the possibility of running home meteorological changes 
on the earth, especially those followed by drought and 

109 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

famines in various parts of the empire, to the varying 
changes in the sun indicated by the ebb and flow of spots 
on its surface. With this end in view observations of 
the sun were commenced in India and the Mauritius to 
supplement those taken at Greenwich. At the same 
time other daily observations of sun spots by a different 
method were commenced at Kensington. 

This kind of work was at first considered ideally use- 
less; we shall see later on what has become of it. 

IMPROVEMENTS IN TELESCOPES 

The progress in astronomical science throughout the 
nineteenth century has naturalfy to a great extent de- 
pended upon the advances made both in the optics of the 
telescope and the way in which they are mounted, either 
with circles to record exact times and positions, or made 
to move so as to keep a star or other celestial objects in 
the field of view while under observation. The perfection 
of definition and the magnitude of the lenses employed 
in the modern instrument have been responsible for 
many important discoveries. 

Ever since the telescope was invented — Galileo's lens 
was smaller than those used in spectacles — men's minds 
have been concentrated on producing instruments of 
larger and larger size to fathom the cosmos to its inner- 
most depths. 

At the beginning of the century we were, as we have 
seen already, in possession of reflectors of large dimen- 
sions; Herschel's four-foot mirror, the instrument he was 
using in 1801, which had a focal length of forty feet, 
was capable of being employed with high magnifying 
powers; and it was the judicious use of these, on occa- 
sions when the finest of weather prevailed, that enabled 
him to enrich so extensively our knowledge of the stellar 
and planetary systems. For the ordinary work of as- 

110 



ASTRONOMY 

tronomy, however, especially when circles are used, 
refractors are the more suitable instruments. This 
form suffers less from the vicissitudes of weather and 
temperature, and is, therefore, more suited where exact 
measurements are required. 

Towards the end of the eighteenth century a Swiss 
artisan, Pierre Guinard, after many years of patient 
labor, succeeded in producing pure disks of flint glass 
as large as six inches in diameter. The modern re- 
fracting telescope thus became possible. 

In 1804 there was started at Munich the famous optical 
and mechanical institute, which soon made its presence 
felt in the astronomical world. Reforms in instrument 
making were soon taken in hand, and under the leader- 
ship of the great German astronomer, Bessel, great 
strides were made in instruments of precision. Fraun- 
hofer, who had been silently working away at the theory 
of lenses, and making various experiments in the manu- 
facture of glass, was joined, in 1805, by Guinard. In 
1809 Troughton invented a new method of graduating 
circles, according to Airy the greatest improvement ever 
achieved in the art of instrument making. 

In 1824 Fraunhofer successfully completed and per- 
fected an object-glass of 9.9 inches in diameter for the 
Dorpat Observatory. This objective might literally 
have been called a "giant," for nothing approaching 
it in size had been previously made. 

England, which was at one time the exclusive seat 
of the manufacture of refracting telescopes, was now 
completely outstripped by both Germany and France, 
and for this we had to thank " the short-sighted policy 
of the government, which had placed an exorbitant 
duty on the manufacture of flint glass." In 1833 the 
Dorpat refractor was eclipsed by one of fifteen inches 
aperture made for the Pulkowa Observatory by Merz 
& Mahler, Fraunhofer's successors, who about ten years 

III 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

later supplied a similar instrument to Harvard College. 
At that time Lord Rosse emulated with success the ef- 
forts of Herschel and rehabilitated the reflector by pro- 
ducing a metallic mirror of six-foot aperture and fifty- 
four-foot focal length which he mounted at Parsonstown. 
The speculum weighed no less than four tons. To 
mount this immense mass efficiently and safely was a 
work of no light nature, but he successfully accom- 
plished it, and eventually both mirror and the telescope, 
which weighed now altogether fourteen tons, were so 
well counterpoised that they could be easily moved in 
a limited direction by means of a windlass worked by 
two men. The perfection of the "seeing" qualities of 
this instrument and its enormous light-grasping powers 
were particularly striking, and observational astronomy 
was considerably enriched by the discoveries made with it. 

Speculum metal was not destined to stay; ten years 
later (1857) the genius of Leon Foucault introduced 
glass mirrors with a thin coating of silver deposited chem- 
ically, and these have now universally superseded the 
metallic ones. 

The long supremacy of Germany in the matter of 
refractors was broken down ultimately by the famous 
English optician and engineer, Thomas Cooke, of York. 
His first considerable instrument, one of seven inches 
aperture, was finished in 185 1 ; and in 1865, a year before 
his lamented death, he completed the first of our present 
giant refractors, one of twenty-five inches aperture, for 
Mr. Newall, of Gateshead. In consequence of the suc- 
cess of Cooke's achievement other large refractors were 
soon undertaken. 

Alvan Clarke, the famous optician of Cambridgeport, 
Massachusetts, at once commenced a twenty-six-inch 
for the Washington Observatory. The next was one of 
twenty -seven inches, made by Grubb for the Vienna 
Observatory. Object-glasses now grew inch by inch in 

112 



ASTRONOMY 

size, depending on the increased dimensions of disks that 
could be satisfactorily cast. Gautier, of Paris, completed 
a twenty-nine-and-a-half-inch for the Nice Observatory, 
while Alvan Clarke made an objective of thirty inches 
for Pulkowa. In 1877 the latter successfully completed 
the mounting of an objective of thirty-six inches for 
the Lick Observatory, but this immense lens was only 
achieved after a great number of failures. Even this 
large object-glass was surpassed in size by the comple- 
tion in 1892 of the forty -inch which he made for the 
Yerkes Observatory, and by that made by Gautier for 
the Paris Exhibition of 1900. 

So much, then, for the largest refractors. In recent 
years, since the introduction of the silver on glass mir- 
rors, with their stability of figure and brilliant surface, 
which can be easily renewed, reflectors of large apertures 
are again being produced. The first of these was one 
of thirty-six inches aperture made by Calver for Dr. 
Common, who demonstrated its fine qualities and his 
own skill by the beautiful photographs of the nebula 
of Orion he was enabled to secure with it. Dr. Common 
himself has since turned his attention to the making 
and silvering of large mirrors of this kind, and the largest 
he has actually completed and mounted equatorially 
is one with a diameter of five feet. Another of thirty- 
six inches aperture is in use at the Solar Physics Ob- 
servatory at Kensington. 

The progress of depositing silver on glass has led 
of late years to important developments in which plane 
mirrors are used. Foucault was the first to utilize such 
mirrors in his "siderostat," in which such a mirror is 
made to move in front of a horizontal fixed telescope, 
which may be of any focal length, and no expensive 
dome or rising floor is required. The plane mirror of 
the siderostat in the Paris Exhibition telescope is six 
feet in diameter. 

H 113 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

A variation of this instrument is the ccelostat more 
recently advocated by Lippmann. The Coude equa- 
torial mounting also depends upon the use of plane mir- 
rors; with such a telescope the observer is at rest at a 
fixed eye-piece or camera in a room which may be kept 
at any temperature. 

Now that in astronomical work eye observations are 
indispensably supplemented by the employment of 
photography, an important modification of the refract- 
ing telescope has become necessary; this was first sug- 
gested by Rutherfurd. 

The ordinary achromatic object-glass consists, as a 
rule, of two lenses, one made of flint and the other of 
crown glass; but in this form the photographic rays are 
not brought to the same focus as the visual rays. This, 
however, can be achieved by employing three lenses 
instead of two, each of different kinds of glass. The 
most modern improvement in the telescope is due to Mr. 
Dennis Taylor, of Cooke & Sons, and to Dr. Schott and 
Professor Abbe, whose researches in the manufacture 
of old and new varieties of optical glass have rendered 
Mr. Taylor's results feasible. By the Taylor lens out- 
standing color is abolished, all the rays being brought 
absolutely to the same focus ; such lenses can therefore 
be used either for visual observations or for photography 
for spectroscopy. 

SPECTROSCOPIC ASTRONOMY 

The branch of physics which at the present day has 
assumed such mighty and far-reaching proportions in 
astronomical work is that dealing with spectrum analysis, 
which, although suggested as early as the time of Kepler, 
did not receive anj^ impetus as regards its application to 
celestial bodies until the beginning of the present cen- 
tury at the hands of Wollaston and Fraunhofer. Then, 

114 



ASTRONOMY 

however, it still lacked the chemical touch supplied af- 
terwards by Kirchhoff and Bunsen. They showed us that 
the spectrum observed when the light from any heated 
body is passed through a prism is an index to the 
chemical composition of the light source; the constitu- 
tion of a vapor when in a condition to absorb light 
can be determined by an extension of the same prin- 
ciple, first demonstrated by Stokes, Angstrom, and Bal- 
four Stewart, when the century was about half com- 
pleted. 

The first celestial body towards which the spectroscope 
was turned was our central luminary, the sun. 

Wollaston first discovered that its spectrum was crossed 
b}^ a few dark lines; we learned next from Fraunhofer, 
who in 1814 worked with instruments of greater power, 
that the solar spectrum was crossed not only by a few dark 
lines, but by some hundreds. Not content with examining 
the light of the sun, Fraunhofer turned his instrument 
towards the stars, the light of which he also examined, 
so that he may be justly called the inventor of stellar 
spectrum analysis. It is not to the credit of modern 
science that from this time forward spectrum analysis 
did not become a recognized branch of scientific inquiry, 
but, as a matter of fact, Fraunhofer 's observations were 
buried in oblivion for nearly half a century. The im- 
portance of them was not recognized till the origin of 
the dark lines, both in sun and stars, had been explained 
by Stokes and others, as before stated. The lines in 
the solar spectrum were mapped with great diligence by 
Kirchhoff in 186 1 and 1862, and later by Angstrom and 
Thalen, and this was done side by side with chemical 
work in the laboratory. The chemistry of the sun was 
thus to a great extent revealed ; it was no longer a hab- 
itable globe, but one with its visible boundary at a fierce 
heat, surrounded by an atmosphere of metallic vapors, 
chief among them iron, also in a state of incandescence. 

115 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

To these metallic vapors Angstrom added hydrogen 
shortly afterwards. 

Here, then, was established a firm link between the 
heavens and the earth; the first step to the problem of 
the chemistry of space had been taken. 

It was only natural that as advances were made the 
instrumental equipment should keep pace with them. 
Spectroscopes were built on a larger scale ; more prisms, 
which meant greater dispersion, were employed to render 
the measurements of the lines in spectra more accurate. 
The growth of our knowledge especially necessitated 
the making of maps of the lines in the solar spectrum, 
and in the spectra of the chemical elements which had 
been compared with it on a natural scale. This was done 
by Angstrom, who utilized for this purpose the diffraction 
grating invented by Fraunhof er, and defined the position 
of all lines in spectra by their "wave lengths/' in ten- 
millionths of a millimetre or "tenth-metres." 

In 1862 Rutherfurd extended Fraunhofer's work on 
the stars by a first attempt at classification. Two years 
later Huggins and Miller produced maps of the spectra 
of some stars. Donati demonstrated that comets gave 
radiation spectra, and Huggins did the same for nebulae. 

By these observations comets and nebulae were shown 
to be spectroscopically different from stars, which at that 
time were studied by their dark lines only. 

Chiefly by the labors of Pickering, the energetic head of 
the Harvard Observatory, science has been enriched 
during the later years by observations of thousands of 
stellar spectra, the study of which has brought about the 
most marvellous advance in our knowledge. 

These priceless data have enabled us now to classify 
the stars not only by their brightness, or their color, but 
by their chemistry. 

Next to be chronicled is the application of the so-called 
Doppler-Fizeau principle, which teaches us that when 

116 



ASTRONOMY 

a light source is approaching or receding from us the 
light waves are crushed together or drawn out, so that 
the wave length is changed. The amount of change 
gives us the velocity of approach or recess, so that the 
rate of movement of stars towards or from the earth, or 
the up-rush or down-rush of the solar vapors on the sun's 
disk can be accurately determined. A further utilization 
of this principle is found when the stars are so close to- 
gether that they appear as one if the plane of motion 
passes near the earth. A line common to the spectra of 
both stars will appear double twice in each revolution, 
when the motion to or from the earth, or, as it is termed, 
"in the line of sight," is greatest. "Spectroscopic 
doubles," as these stars are called, yield up many of their 
secrets which otherwise would elude us. Their time of 
revolution, the size of the orbit, and the combined mass 
can be determined. 

To return from the stars to the sun. 

By the device of throwing an image of the sun on the 
slit of the spectroscope the spectra of solar spots have 
been studied from 1866 onward, and a little later the 
brighter portions of the sun's outer envelopes, revealed 
till then only during eclipses, were brought within our 
ken spectroscopically, so that they are now studied 
every day. 

CELESTIAL PHOTOGRAPHY 

Wedgewood and Davy, in 1802, made prints on paper by 
means of silver salts, but it was not until 1830 that Niepce 
and Daguerre founded photography, which Arago, in an 
address to the French Chamber, at once suggested might 
subsequently be used to record the positions of stars. 

In 1839 we find Sir John Herschel carrying out a se- 
ries of experiments so important for our correct knowl- 
edge of the sequence of steps in the early stages of pho- 
tography that I have no hesitation in quoting from one 

117 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

of Herschel's manuscripts relating to a deposit on a glass 
plate of " muriate " [chloride] of silver from a mixed so- 
lution of the nitrate with common salt. The manuscript 
states : " After forty-eight hours [the chloride] had formed 
a film firm enough to bear draining the water off very 
slowly by a siphon. Having dried it, I found that it was 
very little affected by light, and by washing it with ni- 
trate of silver, weak, and drying it, it became highly 
sensitive. In this state I took a camera picture of the 
telescope on it." 

The original of the above-mentioned photograph, the 
first photograph ever taken on glass, is now in the sci- 
ence collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South 
Kensington. 

In the early days of photography colored glasses 
were first used to investigate the action of different col- 
ors on the photographic plate. Sir John Herschel was 
among the first to propose that such investigations 
should be made direct with a spectrum, and he, like Dr. 
J. W. Draper, stated that he had found a new kind of 
light beyond the blue end of the spectrum, as the photo- 
graphic plate showed a portion of the spectrum there 
which was not visible to the eye. Advance followed 
advance, and in 1842 Becquerel photographed the whole 
solar spectrum, in colors, with nearly all the lines reg- 
istered by the hand and eye of Fraunhofer, not only 
the blue end, but the complete spectrum, from Draper's 
"latent light," as he called the ultra-violet rays, to the 
extreme red end. 

The first photograph of a celestial object was one of 
the moon, secured by Dr. J. W. Draper in 1840 ; we had 
to wait till 1845, so far as I know, before a daguerreotype 
was taken of the sun; this was done by Foucault and 
Fizeau, while the first photograph of a star — Vega — 
was taken at Harvard in 1850. After the introduction 
of the wet - collodion process regular photography of 

118 



ASTRONOMY 

the sun's surface was commenced, at Sir John Herschel's 
recommendation, at Kew in 1858, and the total solar 
eclipse of i860 was made memorable by the photographs 
of De La Rue, who before that time had secured most 
admirable photographs of the moon, as also had Ruther- 
furd. 

Photography now began to pay the debt she owed 
to spectrum analysis. 

The first laboratory photograph of the spectra of the 
chemical elements was taken by Dr. W. A. Miller in 1862. 

Rutherfurd was the first to secure a photograph of 
the solar spectrum with considerable dispersion by 
means of prisms. 

In 1863 Mascart undertook a complete photographic 
investigation of the ultra-violet portion of the solar spec- 
trum, a work of no mean magnitude. He, however, 
did not employ a train of prisms for producing the 
spectrum, but a diffraction grating, using the light re- 
flected from the first surface. The first photograph 
of the spectrum of a star was secured by Henry Draper, 
the son of Dr. J. W. Draper, one of the pioneers in photog- 
raphy in 1872. 

It was not till the introduction of dry plates in 1876 
that the photography of the fainter celestial objects or 
of their spectra was possible, as a long exposure was 
naturally required. Stellar spectra were photographed 
by Huggins in 1879, and in the next year Draper photo- 
graphed the nebula of Orion. As the dry plates became 
more rapid, and as longer exposures were employed, 
revelation followed revelation; the nebulae as seen by 
the naked eye, and even some stars, were found by the 
Henrys, Roberts, Max Wolf, Barnard, and others, to be 
but the brighter kernels of large nebulous patches. 

This new application of photography, depending 
upon long exposures (the longest one I know of has 
extended to fort} 7 hours), had an important reflex action 

119 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

on the mechanical parts of the telescope ; it was not only 
necessary to keep the faintest star exactly on the same 
part of the plate during the whole of the exposure, but 
night after night the stellar image must be brought 
on to the same part of the plate so that the exposure 
might be continued. 

A system of electric control of the going of the driving- 
clock of the telescope by means of a sidereal clock was 
introduced, the simplest one being designed by Russell, 
of Sydney ; a most elaborate one by Grubb, of Dublin. 

Another application of the method of long exposures 
has been the discovery of minor planets by the trails 
impressed by their motion among the stars on the pho- 
tographic plates on which the images of both are im- 
pressed. 

A complete spectroscopic survey of the stars by means 
of photography was commenced in 1886 at Harvard 
College, as a memorial to Draper, who died while he was 
laboring diligently and successfully in securing advances 
in astro-physical inquiries. To carry on this work at 
Harvard, Professor Pickering wisely reverted to the 
method first employed by Fraunhofer, and utilized by 
Respighi and another in 1871, of placing prisms in front 
of the object-glass. 

In the photographing of stellar spectra by means 
of objective prisms, the driving-clock of the telescope 
must not go exactly at sidereal rate, but at certain speeds 
depending on the brightness and position of the star 
under examination. 

This is necessary because the image of the spectrum 
of a star on the photograph is only a thin line in which 
it is impossible to see the spectral lines; the spectrum 
must be broadened, and this is accomplished by making 
the star image " trail "toa certain degree on the plate. 
This trailing is accomplished by means of the clock, 
the rate of which is made to vary. In this way the trail 

120 



ASTRONOMY 

of a spectrum of a star on the photographic plate is always 
obtained of the same width, while the density of the image 
is made fairly constant by increasing the rate for bright 
stars and decreasing it for fainter ones. In this way 
spectra of the brighter stars rivalling in perfection and 
detail those obtained of the spectrum of the sun itself 
thirty years ago have been obtained. Such photographs 
have rendered a minute chemical classification of the 
stars possible. 

One of the most interesting applications of photography 
to spectrum analysis during the latter part of the cen- 
tury has been the utilization by Messrs. Deslandres 
and Hale of a suggestion made by Janssen, that by 
employing photography images of the sun and its sur- 
roundings can be obtained in light on one wave length. 
In this way we can study the distribution of any one of 
the chemical constituents of the sun separately, and 
note its behavior, not only on the sun itself, but in the 
atmosphere which enfolds the disk. 

It is strange that, in spite of the suggestions of Faye, 
and others after him, one of the great advantages of 
the employment of photography in astronomical work, 
namely, the abolition of "personal equation," has so far 
been almost entirely neglected. What "personal equa- 
tion" is can be perhaps illustrated by considering an 
observer who is observing the transit of a star over the 
wires in a transit instrument. 

His object is to note the exact time, to a fraction of 
a second, when a star passes each wire ; and this is done 
by listening to the beats of a clock near at hand and esti- 
mating the fractions. Some observers constantly note 
the time either a little in advance or a little later than 
the actual time, and this small distance between the 
observer and the true times is more or less constant for 
each observer. This difference has to be taken into ac- 
count for every observation. Even the use of the chron- 

121 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ograph in transit work, by which the observation is 
electrically recorded, does not entirely eliminate the 
error. The photographic method of transit work has 
been experimented on, but, so far as I know, it has not 
yet been used at more than one or two observatories. 
It will doubtless eventually rid us of "personal equa- 
tion " entirety, for the star image may be photographed 
and the time recorded by the same current of electricity. 
At the end of the century we could almost say that 
except in relation to the work of the meridional ob- 
servatories, photographic methods of recording observa- 
tions had become exclusively used. One of the cases 
in which its utility is most in evidence is in the matter 
of eclipse observations. Spectra of the sun's surround- 
ings containing a thousand lines are taken in a second 
of time, thus replacing five or six doubtful eye observa- 
tions by wealth of results which have enabled the recent 
vast progress to be secured. 

CATALOGUES 

Catalogues of the stars were among the first scientific 
records started by man, and so long as only the naked 
eye was used the work was not difficult, as only approxi- 
mate positions were attempted, even by Hipparchus; 
but long before the eighteenth century dawned the prob- 
lem was entirely charged by the invention of the tele- 
scope and by the provision of accurately divided circles; 
not only could better positions be recorded, but the num- 
ber of stars to be catalogued was enormously increased, 
and, furthermore, other objects, nebulae, presented them- 
selves in considerable numbers. 

In 1 80 1 the star catalogues chiefly relied on were those 
of Lacaille, containing about three thousand stars scat- 
tered over the whole heavens. 

Maskelyne, who was then Astronomer Royal, had 

122 



ASTRONOMY 

published in 1790 a catalogue of thirty-six fundamental 
stars, chiefly for the purposes of navigation. The first 
great catalogue of the century was the Fundamenta 
Astronomiae of Bessel, produced in 1818. This con- 
tained three thousand two hundred and twenty -two 
stars. The Bonn Durchmiisterung, with its catalogue of 
three hundred and twenty-four thousand one hundred 
and ninety-eight stars in the northern hemisphere, and 
the corresponding atlas published in 1857-63, was the 
next memorable achievement in this direction. For it 
we have to thank Bessel and Argelander and a perfect 
system of work. 

Another monumental catalogue dealing with the 
stars in the southern heavens has been that of the south- 
ern stars observed by Gould (1866). While the century 
was closing, another catalogue, far more stupendous 
than anything which could be conceived possible a few 
years ago, was steadily being compiled. This we owe 
to the far-sightedness and energy of Admiral Mouchez, 
a late director of the Paris Observatory. The work 
was commenced in 1892. 

The whole heavens, north and south alike, have been 
divided into zones, and the chief observatories on the 
earth's surface are busy night after night in taking 
photographs of that part intrusted to them. The whole 
heavens are thus being made to write their autobiog- 
raphy, and the total gain to the astronomy of the future 
of this most priceless record can perhaps be scarcely 
grasped as yet, although the advantage of being able 
at any point of future time to see on a photographic 
plate what the heavens are telling now is sufficiently 
obvious. 

Catalogues of the stars have, of course, led to other 
minor catalogues of various classes of stars, binary, 
variable, and the like. In the later years catalogues 
of stars according to their spectra have enriched science. 

123 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

The first extensive catalogue of stellar spectra was 
published by Vogel. It dealt with four thousand and 
fifty-one stars, and appeared in 1883; it has since been 
followed by the Draper catalogue, based upon photo- 
graphs of the spectra, which contains a much larger 
number. With regard to nebulae, Herschel published his 
third catalogue in 1802. The last catalogue of this 
nature is by Dreyer (1888), and contains seven thou- 
sand eight hundred and forty of these objects. In the 
time of Tycho they could be counted on the fingers of 
one hand. 

INVESTIGATIONS OF SOME IMPORTANT ASTRO- 
NOMICAL CONSTANTS 

The nineteenth century was fruitful in the determina- 
tion of many numerical values which are all important in 
enabling us to determine the distance and masses of the 
heavenly bodies, thereby giving us a firm grasp hot 
only of the dimensions of our own system, but of those 
scattered in the celestial spaces. 

To take the distances first. We must begin with the 
exact measure of the earth; for this we must measure 
the exact length of an arc of meridian or of parallel — 
that is, a stretch of the earth's surface lying north and 
south or east and west, between places of which the 
latitudes are accurately known in the former case, and 
the longitude in the latter. In either case we can de- 
termine the number of miles which go to a degree. Be- 
ginning at the opening of the nineteenth century with an 
arc of meridian of two degrees measured by Gauss, from 
Gottingen to Altona, the arcs of meridian grew longer as 
the century grew older, till, at the close, the measurement 
of an arc of meridian from the Cape to Cairo, embrac- 
ing something like sixty-eight degrees of latitude, was 
mooted. 

124 



ASTRONOMY 

The measurements of arcs of parallel have been de- 
veloped by the rapid extension of telegraphic communi- 
cations, which now permit the longitude of the terminal 
stations to be determined with the greatest accuracy. 

Thanks to this work, we now have the size of our 
planet to a few miles. The polar diameter is 41,709,790 
feet, but the equator is not a circle: the equatorial di- 
ameter from longitude 8 degrees 15 minutes west to 
longitude 188 degrees 15 minutes west is 41,853,258 
feet; that at right angles to it is 41,850,210 feet — that 
is, some thousand yards shorter. The earth, then, is 
shaped like an orange slightly squeezed. 

Knowing the earth's diameter, we can obtain the sun's 
distance by several methods, the old one by observing 
transits of Venus, one of which Cook went out to observe 
in 1768, and two of which recurred in 1874 and 1882; 
new ones by observations of Mars or one of the minor 
planets at a favorable opposition, and by determining 
the velocity of light. 

The recent discovery of a minor planet, Eros, which 
in one part of its orbit is nearer the earth than Mars, 
has recently revived interest in this method, and a com- 
bined attack is in contemplation. 

It has been long known that light has a finite velocity, 
but we had to wait till the 60 's before Fizeau and Fou- 
cault showed us how to determine its exact value. The 
methods introduced by them have been recently applied 
by Cornu, Newcomb, and Michelson, and the resulting 
value is slightly less than three hundred thousand metres 
per second. Combining this with the constant of aber- 
ration, the distance of the sun can be determined. 

It is wonderful how these vastly different methods 
agree in the resulting mean distance. At the beginning 
of the century it stood roughly at ninety-five million 
miles; this has been reduced to ninety -three million 
nine hundred and sixty-five thousand miles. The ex- 

125 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

treme difference between the old and new values of the 
solar parallax, two-fifths of a second of arc, is repre- 
sented by the apparent breadth of a human hair viewed 
at a distance of about one hundred and twenty- five 
feet. 

Knowing the distance of the sun, the way is open to us 
to determine, by a method suggested by Galileo, the dis- 
tances of those stars which occupy a different position 
among their fellows, as seen from opposite points in the 
earth's orbit round the sun, points one hundred and 
eighty-six million miles apart. We now know the dis- 
tances of many such stars, Bessel having determined 
the first in 1838. The nearest star to us, so far as we 
know, is Centauri, the light of which takes four and a 
half years to reach us. Not many years ago Pritchard 
applied photography to this branch of inquiry ; we may, 
therefore, expect a still more rapid progress in the future. 

With regard to masses. We naturally must first know 
that of the earth; having its size, if we can determine 
its density, the rest follows. 

The problem of determining the mean density of the 
earth occupied the minds of many workers during the 
nineteenth century. Newton (about 1728) pointed out 
how it could be deduced by observing the deviation from 
the vertical of a plumb-line suspended near a large mass 
of matter — a mountain, the volume and density of which 
could be previously determined. This method, which 
is very laborious and requires the greatest skill and most 
delicate instruments, has been employed several times, 
by Bouguer and Condamine, in 1738, at Chimborazo; 
Maskelyne, in 1774, at Schehallien in Scotland; and 
James, at Arthur's Seat, near Edinburgh. 

At the beginning of the century another method was 
introduced by Cavendish. This consists in measuring 
the attraction of two large spheres of known size and 
mass, such as two balls of lead on two very small and 

126 



ASTRONOMY 

light spheres, by means of a torsion balance constructed 
by Mitchell for this purpose. 

The most recent determination by this method, and 
one which is considered to give us perhaps the most ac- 
curate value, is that which is due to the skill and inge- 
nuity of Professor Boys. His improvement consisted in 
constructing a most delicate torsion balance; the attract- 
ed spheres consisted of small gold balls suspended by a 
quartz fibre carrying a mirror to indicate the amount of 
twist. The whole instrument was quite small, and 
could easily be protected from air currents and changes 
of temperature, while the use of the quartz fibres re- 
duced to a minimum one of the greatest difficulties of the 
Cavendish experiment. The value of the mean density 
of the earth is now considered to be 5.6, which means 
that if we have a globe of water exactly the same size as 
our own earth, the real earth would weigh just 5.6 times 
this globe of water. The earth's weight, in tons, does 
not convey much idea, but that it is six thousand trillions 
may interest the curious. This determination has en- 
abled the masses of the sun, moon, planets and satel- 
lites, and many sidereal systems to be accurately known 
in relation to the mass of the earth. 

SOME ACHIEVEMENTS OF MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS 

Uranus, a planet unknown to the ancients, was dis- 
covered by its movement among the stars by William 
Herschel in 1781. It was not until 1846 that another 
major planet was added to the solar system, and this 
discovery was one of the sensations of the century. 

The story of the independent discovery of Neptune 
by Adams and Le Verrier, who were both driven to the 
conclusion that certain apparent regularities in the mo- 
tion of Uranus were due to the attraction of another body 
travelling on an orbit outside it, has been often told. 

127 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

The subsequent discovery of the external body not far 
from the place at which their mathematical analysis 
had led them to believe it would be seen, will forever be 
regarded as a fine triumph of the human intellect. 

But the results of the inquiries which now concern us 
are generally of not so sensational a character, although 
they lie at the root of our knowledge of celestial motions. 
They more often take the shape of tables and discussions 
relating to the movements of the bodies which make up 
our solar system. 

Gauss may be said to have led the way during the 
nineteenth century by his Theoria mollis corporum coeles- 
tium solem ambientinm. This was a worthy sequel to 
the Mechanique Celeste, in which work, towards the end 
of the eighteenth century, Laplace had enshrined all 
that was known on the planetary results of gravita- 
tion. 

In later years Le Verrier and Newcomb have been 
among the chief workers on whom the mantle of such 
distinguished predecessors has fallen. From them the 
planet and satellite tables now in use have been derived. 

But the motion of our own satellite, the moon, has had 
fascinations for other analysts besides those we have 
named. 

The problem, indeed, of the moon's motion is one of 
the most difficult, and has taxed the ingenuity of astron- 
omers from an early date. Even at the present day it is 
impossible to predict the exact position of the moon at 
any one moment owing to inequalities and perturbations, 
the exact varying values of which are not known. 

The two most important theories of the motion of the 
moon completed towards the middle of the century were 
due to Hansen and Delaunay. The former's appeared in 
1838, the lunar tables being published later (1857), while 
the latter 's was published in i860. 

Hansen's theory had for its chief object the formation 

128 



ASTRONOMY 

of tables ; to avoid the inconvenience of using in his cal- 
culations series which slowly converge, he inserted nu- 
merical values throughout. In Hansen's solution the 
problem is one actually presented by nature, allowance 
being made for every known cause of disturbance. There 
is one disadvantage, namely, that should observations 
demand a change in any of the constants used, there is 
no means of making any correction in the results. 

Delaunay's theory surmounted this difficulty, but at 
the expense of still greater inconvenience for making 
an ephemeris. The slow convergence of certain series 
involved an immense amount of labor to give sufficient^ 
approximate results. 

More recently, as the century was closing, Dr. Brown 
took up the subject and made a fresh attempt to calcu- 
late the motion of our satellite. It may be stated that 
he adopts all Delaunay's modifications of the problem 
and works them out algebraically ; but there are many 
technical differences which it would be out of place to 
mention here. 

Enough has been stated to show that there is not likely 
to be any breach of continuity in the treatment of this 
most important problem. 

Another attack on the moon, and, incidentally, its 
motion, has recently been made by another analyst, 
Professor George Darwin; grappling with all the con- 
sequences of tidal friction, he has been able to present 
to us the past and future history of our satellite. Be- 
ginning as a part of the material congeries from which 
subsequently some fifty million years ago both earth and 
moon, as separate bodies, were formed, it has ever since 
been extending its orbit, and so retreating farther away 
from its centre of motion, while the period of the earth's 
rotation has been increasing at the same time, from a 
possible period of some three hours when the moon was 
born, to one of one thousand four hundred hours when 
I 129 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the day and month will be equal, something like one 
hundred and fifty million years being required for the 
process. 

STELLAR EVOLUTION 

It was only in the 80 's, after thousands of observa- 
tions of the spectra of stars, nebulae, and comets had been 
secured, that the full meaning of the revelations of the 
spectroscope began to dawn upon the world. 

Before the introduction of spectrum analysis all stars 
were supposed to be suns, and the only difference recog- 
nized among them was one of brilliancy and the varia- 
tion of brilliancy in the case of some of them. 

It ultimately came out that great classes might be 
recognized by the differences of their spectra, which 
were ultimately traced to differences in their chemistry 
and in their temperature, as determined by the extension 
of the spectra in the ultra-violet, the whiter stars being 
hotter than the red ones, as a white-hot poker is hotter 
than a red-hot poker. 

Next there was evidence to show that a large propor- 
tion of the stars were not stars at all like the sun, but 
swarms of meteorites; and in this way the mysterious 
new stars which appear from time to time in the heavens, 
and a large number of variable stars, were explained 
as arising from collisions among such swarms. 

The inquiry which dealt with the spectroscopic re- 
sults, having thus introduced the ideas of meteor swarms 
and collisions to explain many stellar phenomena, went 
further and showed that the various chemical changes 
observed in passing from star to star might also be ex- 
plained by supposing the whole stellar constitution to 
arise from cool meteoritic swarms represented D3 7 nebulae, 
the changes up to a certain point being explained D3 7 a 
rise of temperature due to condensation towards a centre. 
Here the new view was opposed to that of Laplace, ad- 

130 



ASTRONOMY 

vanced during the last century, that the stars were pro- 
duced by condensation and cooling; but Kelvin had 
shown, before the new view was enunciated, that La- 
place's view was contrary to thermodynamics, a branch 
of science which had developed since Laplace published 
his famous Exposition du Systeme du Monde. 

After all the meteorites in the parent swarm had been 
condensed into the central gaseous mass, that mass had 
to cool. So that we had in the heavens not only stars 
more or less meteoritic in structure, of rising tempera- 
ture, but stars chiefly gaseous, of falling temperature. 
It was obvious that representatives of both these classes 
of stars might have nearly the same mean effective tem- 
perature, and therefore more or less the same spectrum. 
A minute inquiry entirely justified these conclusions. 

So far had the detailed chemistry of the stars been 
carried in the latter years of the century that the question 
of stellar evolution gave rise to that of inorganic evo- 
lution generally, the sequence in the phenomena of 
which can only be studied in the stars, for laboratory 
work without stint has shown that in them we have 
celestial furnaces, the heat of which transcends that of 
our most powerful electric sparks. In this way astron- 
omy is paying the debt she owes to chemistry. 



THE SUN AND HIS SYSTEM 

Although the outer confines of space have, as we 
have seen, been compelled to bring their tribute of new 
knowledge by means of the penetrating power possessed 
by modern telescopes, and the cameras and spectro- 
scopes attached to them, the study of the near has by 
no means been neglected, and for the reason that in as- 
tronomy especially we must content ourselves in the 
case of the more distant bodies by surmising what 

131 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

happens in them from the facts gathered in the region 
where alone detailed observations are possible. 

Thus what we can learn about the sun helps to ex- 
plain what we discern much more dimly in the case of 
stars ; a study of the moon 's face we are compelled to take 
as showing us the possibilities relating to the surface 
condition of other satellites so far removed from us that 
they only appear as points of light. 

To begin, then, with the sun. Where a volume might 
be written, a few words must suffice. I have already 
stated that at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
the prevailing opinion was that it was a habitable globe. 
It was limited to the fiery ball we see. At the end of the 
century it is a body of the fiercest heat, and the ball we 
see is only a central portion of a huge and terribly in- 
teresting mechanism, the outer portions of which heave 
and throb every eleven years. Spots, prominences, co- 
rona, everything feels this throbbing. 

Although the discovery of spots on the sun was among 
Galileo's first achievements, it was reserved for the last 
half of the nineteenth century to demonstrate their al- 
most perfect periodicity. 

Thanks to the labors of Schwabe, Wolf, Carrington, 
and De la Rue, Stewart, and Loewy, we now know that 
every eleven years the spots wax and wane; Tacchini 
and Ricco, during the last thirty years, have proved 
that the prominences follow suit, and the fact that the 
corona also obeys the same law was established during 
the American eclipse of 1878. 

The study of solar physics consists in watching and 
recording the thermal, chemical, and other changes 
which accompany this period. Some of these effects 
can be best studied during those times when the ball 
itself is covered by the moon in an eclipse. Then the 
outer portions of the sun are revealed in all their beauty 
and majesty, and all the world goes to see. 

132 



ASTRONOMY 

But it is the quiet daily work in the laboratory which 
has enabled us to study the sun's place in relation to 
the other stars, and so to found a chemical classification 
of all the stars that shine. 

From the sun we may pass to his system, and first 
consider the nearest body to us — the moon. 

While some astronomers have been discussing the 
movements and evolution of our satellite, others have 
been engaged upon maps of its surface, upon questions 
dealing with a lunar atmosphere, or a study of the origin 
of the present conformations and of possible changes. 
The science of selenology may be said to have been 
founded by Schroter at the beginning of the century, 
but it required the application of photography in later 
years to put it on a firm basis. Maps of the moon have 
been prepared by Lohrmann, Beer and Madler, and 
Schmidt, the latter showing the positions of more than 
thirty thousand craters. 

Very erroneous notions are held by some as to what 
we may hope to do in the examination of the moon's 
surface by a powerful telescope. A power of a thou- 
sand enables us to see it as if we were looking at York 
from London. It is recorded that Lassell once said that 
with his largest reflector in a " fit " of the finest definition 
he thought he might be able to detect whether a carpet 
as large as Lincoln's Inn Fields was round or square. 
Under these circumstances, then, we may well under- 
stand that the question of changes on the surface has 
been raised from time to time never to be absolutely 
settled one way or the other. By many the existence 
of an atmosphere is denied, and this is a condition which 
would negative changes, anything like the geological 
changes brought about on the surface of the earth, but 
the idea is now held by many that there is still an at- 
mosphere, though of great tenuity. 

The last few years of the century were rendered 

133 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

memorable from the lunar point of view by the publica- 
tion and minute study of a most admirable series of 
photographs of the moon obtained by the great equato- 
rial Coude of the Paris Observatory by Loewy and Pui- 
seaux. One of the chief points aimed at has been to de- 
termine the sequence of the various events represented 
by the rills, craters, and walled plains, the mountain 
ranges and seas. This work is still in progress, the 
fourth part of the atlas being published in 1900; but 
enough has already appeared to indicate that the results 
of the inquiry when completed will be of the most impor- 
tant kind. The authors have already come to the con- 
clusion that the lunar and terrestrial sea-bottoms much 
resemble each other, inasmuch as both have convex 
surfaces. The lunar seas began by sinking of vast 
regions; the formidable volcanic eruptions of which the 
moon has been the scene have taken place in times equiv- 
alent to those labelled "recent" in geological parlance. 
There is evidence that the axis of the moon has under- 
gone great displacements, and four great periods of 
change have been made out. Finally they state that 
there is serious ground to believe that there is an atmos- 
phere of some sort remaining. 

It may readily be understood that with each increase 
of optical power new satellites of the various planets 
have been discovered. Soon after the discover}^ of Nep- 
tune a satellite was noted by Lassell. In 1846 both he 
and the eagle-eyed observer Dawes independently dis- 
covered another satellite (Hyperion) of Saturn. Lassell 
was rewarded in the next year by the discovery of two 
more satellites of Uranus; but, strangest observation 
of all, in 1877 Hall discovered at Washington two satel- 
lites of Mars some six or seven miles only in diameter, 
one of them revolving round the planet in seven and one- 
half hours at a distance of less than four thousand miles. 
As the day on Mars is not far different in duration from 

134 



ASTRONOMY 

our own, this tiny satellite must rise in the west and 
south three times a day ! 

Wonderful as this discovery was, it is certainly not 
less wonderful when we consider it in connection with 
a passage in Gulliver's Travels, so true is it that truth is 
stranger than fiction. Swift, in his satirical reference 
to the inhabitants of Laputa, writes : " They have like- 
wise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which re- 
volve round Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from 
the centre of the primarj 7 planet exactly three of his di- 
ameters and the outermost five; the former revolves in 
the space of ten hours; and the latter in twenty -one 
and a half." 

The last discovery of this kind has been that of an 
inner satellite of Jupiter by Barnard in 1892. 

The planets from Mercury to Saturn were known to 
the ancients. I have already referred to the discovery 
of Uranus by Herschel's giant telescope, not long before 
the nineteenth century was born, and of Neptune, by 
analysis, towards the end of the first half of the century. 
With regard to what modern observations have done in 
regard to their physical appearance, the first place in 
general interest must be given to Saturn and Mars. 

Saturn has alwa3 T s been regarded as the most inter- 
esting of the planetary family on account of its unique 
rings. Many subdivisions of the rings, and a dusky 
ring, first seen by Dawes and Bond, have been discov- 
ered during the last sixty years. 

The meteoritic nature of the rings was suggested by 
Clerk Maxwell in 1857, and Keeler's demonstration of 
the truth of this view by means of the spectroscope, a 
few years ago, was brilliant in conception and execution. 

But during the last half of the century the interest 
centred in Mars has been gradually increasing. The 
drawings made during the opposition of 1862, when 
compared with those made by Beer and Madler (1830-- 

135 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

40), made it perfectly clear that in this planet we had to 
deal with one strangely like our own in many respects. 
There were obviously land and water surfaces; the 
snow at the poles melted in the summer-time; clouds 
were seen forming from time to time, and the changing 
tones of the water surfaces suggested fine and rough 
weather. 

Afterwards came the revelation of the hawk-eyed Schia- 
parelli, beginning in the 3 T ear 1877, and his wonderful 
map of the planet's surface. The land surfaces, instead 
of being unbroken, were cut up, as an English farm is 
cut up by hedges; straight lines of different breadths 
and tints crossed the land surfaces in all directions, and 
at times some of them appeared double. Schiaparelli 
naturally concluded that they were rivers — water chan- 
nels — and being an Italian he used the appropriate word 
canali. This, unfortunately, as it turned out, was trans- 
lated canals. Now canals are dug, ergo there were dig- 
gers. From this the demonstration, not of the habita- 
bility, but of the actual habitation, of Mars was a small 
step, and the best waj T of signalling to newly found kins- 
men across some thirty millions of miles of space was 
discussed. 

The world of science owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. 
Percival Lowell for having taken out to the pure air and 
low latitude of Arizona an eighteen-inch telescope for the 
sole purpose of accumulating facts tending to throw 
light upon this newly raised question. This he did in 
1894. Schiaparelli has continued his magnificent ob- 
servations through each opposition when the planet 
is most favorably situated for observation, and since 
1896 Signor Cerulli, armed with a fifteen-inch Cooke, 
in the fine climate of Italy, has joined in the inquiry, so 
that facts are now being rapidly accumulated. It has 
been stated that markings similar to the strange so- 
called "canals" on Mars are to be seen on Mercury, 

136 



ASTRONOMY 

Venus, and even on the satellites of Jupiter. Mr. Per- 
cival Lowell does not hesitate to proclaim himself in favor 
of their being due, in Mars, to an intelligent system of 
irrigation. Signor Cerulli claims that wherever seen 
they are mere optical effects. We may be well content 
to leave to the twentieth century a general agreement on 
this interesting subject. 

Finally, in our survey of our own system, come comets 
and meteor swarms. One of the most fruitful discoveries 
of the century, that comets are meteor swarms, we owe 
to the genius of Schiaparelli, A. H. Newton, and other 
workers on those tiny celestial messengers which give 
rise to the phenomena of " falling " or " shooting " stars. 

The magnificent displays of 1799, 1833, 1866, and, 
alas! that which failed to come in 1899, we now know 
must be associated with Tempel's Comet. This is by 
no means the only case so far established; the con- 
nection will in the future be closer still when the orbits 
of the various swarms observed throughout the year 
shall be better known. 

Comets which attract public attention by their bright- 
ness and grandeur of form are rather rare, and, in fact, 
only twenty-five of such have been seen since 1800. We 
have, however, with the great advance in instrumental 
equipment, been able to discover many which are scarcely 
visible to the naked eye, and this has swollen the number 
of comets very considerably. In the seventeenth cen- 
tury we find that only thirty-two were observed, while in 
the eighteenth this number was more than doubled 
(seventy- two). In the nineteenth century more than 
three hundred were placed on record, which is practically 
more than four times the number seen in the eighteenth. 

The last great comet visible any considerable time 
was that discovered by Donati in 1858, and so carefully 
observed by Bond. It is unfortunate that since the im- 
portance, in so many directions, of spectroscopic obser- 

137 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

vations of comets has been recognized they have been 
conspicuous by their absence. 

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SOLAR AND TERRES- 
TRIAL WEATHER 

Everybody agrees that all the energy utilized on this 
planet of ours, with the single exception of that sup- 
plied by the tides, comes from the sun. We are all 
familiar with the changes due to the earth's daily rota- 
tion bringing us now on the side of our planet illuminated 
by the sun, then plunging us into darkness ; that changes 
of season must necessarily follow from the earth's yearly 
journey round the sun is universally recognized. 

On the other hand, it is a modern idea that those solar 
phenomena which prove to us considerable changes of 
temperature in the sun itself, may, and indeed should, 
be echoed by changes on our planet, giving us thereby 
an eleven-year period to be considered, as well as a year 
and a day. 

This response of the earth to solar changes was first 
observed in the continuous records of those instruments 
which register for us the earth's magnetism at any one 
place. The magnetic effects were strongest when there 
were more spots, taking them as indicators of solar 
changes. Lamont first (without knowing it) made 
this out, at the beginning of the latter half of the cen- 
tury (1851), from the Gottingen observations of the daily 
range of the declination needle. Sabine the next year 
not only announced the same cycle in the violence of 
the "magnetic storms" observed at Toronto, but at 
once attributed them to solar influence, the two cycles 
running concurrently. It is now universally recognized 
that terrestrial magnetic effects, including aurorae, mi- 
nutely echo the solar changes. 

The eleven-year period is not one to be neglected. 

138 



ASTRONOMY 

Next comes the inquiry in relation to meteorology. 
Sir William Herschel, in the first year of the century, 
when there were practically neither sun-spot nor rain- 
fall observations available, did not hesitate to attack 
the question whether the price of wheat was affected 
by the many -or -few -spot solar condition. He found 
the price to be high when the sun was spotless, and vice 
versa. 

By 1872, however, we had both rainfall and sun-spot 
observations, and the cycle of the latter had been made 
out. Meldrum, the most distinguished meteorologist 
living at the time, and others, pronounced that the rain- 
fall was greatest at sun-spot maximum, and, further, 
that the greatest number of cyclones occurred in the 
East and West Indies at such times. 

This result with regard to rainfall was not generally 
accepted, but Chambers showed shortly afterwards an 
undoubted connection between the cycles of solar spots 
and barometic pressure in the Indian area. 

By means of a study of the widened lines observed 
in sun spots an attempt has been recently made to study 
the temperature, history of the sun since about 1877, 
and the years of mean temperature and when the heat 
was in excess (+) and defect ( — ) made out, have been 
as follows : 

Heat 
condition mean + mean — mean + mean — mean 
Years 1869 1876 1881 1886-87 1891-92 

1870-75 1877-80 1882-86 1881-91 1892 

Having these solar data, the next thing to do was to 
study the Indian rainfall during the southwest monsoon 
for the years 1877— 1886, the object being to endeavor to 
ascertain if the + an d — temperature pulses in the sun 
were echoed by + and — pulses of rainfall. The Indian 
rainfall was taken first because in the tropics the phe- 

139 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

nomena are known to be the simplest. It was found 
that in many parts of India the + and — conditions 
of solar temperature were accompanied by + and — 
pulses, producing pressure changes and heavy rains 
in the Indian Ocean and the surrounding land. These 
occurred generally in the first year following the mean 
condition, that is, in 1877--78 and 1882-83. 

The rainfalls at Mauritius, Cape Town, and Batavia 
were next collated to see if the pulses felt in India were 
traceable in other regions surrounding the Indian Ocean 
to the south and east. This was found to be the case. 

A wider inquiry was followed, we are told, with equal 
success, so that we are justified in hoping that the ques- 
tion of the dependence of terrestrial upon solar weather 
has made a step in advance. 

But just as the general public and practical men took 
little heed of the connection between sun spots and 
magnetism until experience taught them that telegraphic 
messages often could not " get through " when there 
were many sun spots, so the same public will not con- 
sider the connection in regard to meteorology unless the 
forecasting of droughts and famines be possible. 

The recent work suggests that, if the recent advances 
in solar physics be considered, the inquiries regarding 
rainfall may be placed on a firmer basis than they could 
possibly have had in 1872, and that such forecastings 
may become possible. 

What was looked for in 1872 was a change in the quan- 
tity of rain at maximum sun spots only, the idea being 
that there might be an effective change of solar tem- 
perature, either in excess or defect, at such times and 
that there would be a gradual and continuous variation 
from maximum to maximum. 

We see that the rainfalls referred to above justify the 
conclusions derived from the recent work that two effects 
ought to be expected in a sun-spot cycle instead of one. 

140 



ASTRONOMY 

There was excess of rainfall, not only near the sun-spot 
maximum, but near the minimum. 

If the authors of this communication to which I refer 
are right, then droughts and famines occur in India be- 
cause the rain pulses, which are associated with the solar- 
heat pulses, are of short duration. When they cease the 
quantity of rain which falls in the Indian area is not 
sufficient, without water storage, for the purposes of 
agriculture; they are followed, therefore, by droughts, 
and at times subsequently by famines. They divide the 
period 1 877-89 as under: 

r 1877. 

Rain from — pulse < 1878. 

[ 1879 (part). 

f 1879 (part). 

No rain pulse { 1880 (central year). 

I 1881 (part). 

C 1881 (part). 

J 1882. 
Rain from + pulse j jgg,, 

I 1884 (part). 

r 1884 (part). 

No rain pulse j Jggg \ (central year). 

I 1887 (part). 

r 1887 (part). 

Rain from — pulse -j 1888. 

I 1889. 

Their statement is based on the fact that all the famines 
which have devastated India for the last seventy years 
have occurred at intervals of eleven years, or thereabouts, 
working backward and forward from the central years 
1880 and 1885-86 in the above table, the middle years, 
that is, between the pulses. 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Mr. Willcocks, in a paper read at the Meteorological 
Congress at Chicago, remarked that "famines in India 
are generally years of low flood in Egypt." 

It is now pointed out that the highest Niles follow the 
years of the + an d — pulses, as does the highest rainfall 
in the Indian area. 

Even if these results, which were communicated to 
the Royal Society of London five weeks before the end 
of the century, be confirmed, it may be pointed out that 
Sir William Herschel's suggestion of 1801 will have re- 
quired a whole century for its fulfilment, so slowly do 
those branches of science move which have not already 
led to some practical development. 

Norman Lockyer. 



PHILOSOPHY 



PHILOSOPHY 

IT is a natural illusion that makes us think of each 
century as exhibiting the continuous development of 
one tendency of mind through a series of stages whose 
differences are only of secondary importance, and, on 
the other hand, to regard the steps from one century 
to another as corresponding to some marked transition 
of thought, as if the world had been suddenly precipitated 
into a new sphere of existence. For some purposes a 
rough generalization of this kind, that breaks at stated 
intervals the continuity of time, may, perhaps, be con- 
venient. When, however, we begin to look at things 
more closely, we discover that it is impossible thus to 
cut through the historical connection of events, as it 
were, "with a hatchet." We discover, for example, 
that the characteristics of the eighteenth century were 
strongly marked only in one period of it; and that 
what we call the spirit of the nineteenth centu^ was 
born some time before the year 1800, and has never quite 
prevailed over other tendencies. At the same time, there 
is an important difference indicated by these two loosely 
used names, and as it is always easier to define things 
by contrast, it may help us to make our subject more 
definite to consider what they mean. 



It is too late now to "abuse the eighteenth century," 
which had its good and evil, like other periods. It is 
K 145 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

commonly conceived as the era of individualism and 
analysis, the era of logical enlightenment and sceptical 
criticism ; and, again, as the era of liberation from ground- 
less superstitions and fictitious claims of authority; 
the era in which mankind seemed for the first time to 
throw off the weight of the past and to enter without fear 
upon the enjoyment of their earthly heritage. The sci- 
ence of Newton had given the last blow to the astron- 
omy that made the earth the centre of the universe. 
It had undermined and discredited the simple theology 
that explained the whole material world as a cosmos 
arranged for the supply of human needs. At the same 
time, the progress of biology was bringing man to a 
consciousness that as a physical being he is only primus 
inter pares in the animal kingdom, and the decay of 
religious belief was making him realize his finitude, 
the limits of his natural existence, as, perhaps, he had 
never done before, at least never since the beginning 
of the Christian era. Earth seemed to be disconnected 
from heaven, and the human race thrown upon its own 
resources. By the new enlightenment all powers, ec- 
clesiastical or political, were stripped of the mysterious 
sanctity that had once invested them. " The nimbus 
was taken away from the heads of the gods and rulers 
of the world." Every authority that claimed man's 
homage was weighed in the scales of the understanding, 
and, so weighed, every such authority was found want- 
ing. The State had come to be regarded as only a col- 
lection of individuals who had agreed to live together 
under a ruler deriving all his claims from their consent, 
and invested with no divine right to their allegiance. 
The Church was no longer a sacred institution governed 
by priests who held their commission directly from 
God, but only a sort of spiritual police agency, an ally 
of the State in the restraint of vice and crime, or, at best, 
in Protestant countries, a society for mutual improve- 

146 



PHILOSOPHY 

ment. Men were "free and equal/' each standing face 
to face with his fellows, admitting no superiority or 
superstition of hero-worship in regard to any one of 
them. And the Deity, if his existence were not denied, 
tended to become a mere "Supreme Being," who was 
removed to such a distance from mankind that he could 
hardly be reached by their reverence, still less by their 
love. 

At the same time, the influences which, in one point 
of view, seemed to limit and narrow human existence, 
in another point of view tended to liberate and enlarge 
it. If they excluded the idea of the infinite from man's 
life, they emancipated him from many degrading super- 
stitions, which in an earlier age had held him "all his 
lifetime subject to bondage." And as the pressure from 
above was lightened the individual seemed to become 
master of himself and of his destiny. If the king could 
no longer say, " L'Etat c'est mot," the rights of the sub- 
ject were vindicated ; if the authority of the Church was 
weakened, the bonds of free inquiry were broken; if 
imagination ceased to fill men with the awe and wonder 
of higher powers, the way was opened up for scientific 
and industrial development; if God was regarded as 
unknowable, "the proper study of mankind was man," 
and that study could now be pursued without fear or 
hinderance. Poetry and religion might be impoverished, 
the sense of the binding force of social relations might 
be weakened, but interest in the bettering of man's earthly 
condition was awakened, and with it came a new desire 
for justice to all, a new intolerance of human suffering, 
and a new demand that the lot of the class " which is 
most numerous and poor " should be made less wretched 
and insecure, and, towards the end of the century, a new 
turn was given to its leading thought, for an effort was 
made to discover in the nature of the individual himself 
the equivalent of those universal powers which the en- 

147 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

lightenment had banished from the external world and 
from the life of society. Rousseau carried individualism 
to an extreme point, at which it became its own correc- 
tion, and taught men to find within their own souls the 
infinite which they could no longer discover without. 
Rejecting in the first instance all social conventions as 
unjust limitations of the natural man, and adopting 
the prevailing theory of the time, that the State is only 
the product of a contract between independent persons, 
he yet discovered in the individual thus liberated from 
all external pressure a "common reason," and "a gen- 
eral will," which could reorganize his life and bind him 
to his fellow-men and to God. This great idea, which 
appears in Rousseau rather as a stroke of insight, an 
intuition of genius — lifting him above his first thoughts 
and insensibly changing their meaning — was grasped 
by Kant as the principle of a new philosophy and worked 
out in a comprehensive system that dealt with all the 
great problems of thought and life. Kant, indeed, 
seemed, like Rousseau, to begin on the plane of eigh- 
teenth-century individualism, but, influenced as he was 
by the philosophy of Leibnitz, he from the first conceived 
the individual as in himself universal ; or, to speak more 
exactly, as having a universal principle realized in him. 
Thus, though in one aspect of his being man is a finite 
object among other objects, confined within limits of 
space and time, and forming only a link in the chain 
of natural causation, in another aspect of it, as a con- 
scious self, he is emancipated from all these limitations. 
For — such is Kant's argument — a knowing subject, 
for whom the whole finite world, including his own finite 
existence, is an object of knowledge, cannot himself be 
comprehended in that world or limited by any of its 
conditions. As there can be no world of objects except 
for a self, it is impossible that such a self should be merety 
one of these objects. Thus, as knowing, or capable of 

148 



PHILOSOPHY 

knowing, all things, man cannot be identified with any 
of them; or if, from one point of view, as an individual, 
he is so identified, yet he has within him a universal 
principle that carries him beyond the limits of his indi- 
viduality. And this contrast shows itself also in his 
practical life. For if as an object he appears to be but 
an animal organism, moved by the impressions of pleas- 
ure and pain which he receives from other objects, yet in 
his inner moral life man is revealed to himself as a self- 
determining subject, emancipated from all sensuous mo- 
tives and from the necessity of nature which they bring 
with them, and conscious of subordination only to the 
law of duty, which is the law of his own reason. And 
that law, in spite of every pressure of circumstance 
from without, and of every impulse of passion from 
within, he knows that he ought to obey, and therefore 
he knows that he can obey it. Thus, in Kant's theory, 
the two extreme views of humanity, as natural and as 
spiritual, as limited to a finite individuality, hemmed 
in by necessities on every side, and yet as possessing 
a universal capacity of knowing, and an absolute power 
of self-determination, these two views are presented 
in sharp antithesis, and at the same time held together 
as different aspects of one life. In fact, we have here, 
as it were, compressed into a nutshell, the result of the 
whole history of eighteenth-century individualism, which 
began by depressing man and ended by exalting him; 
which, with one of its voices, seemed to reduce him to 
the level of an animal, a mere part of the partial world, 
a transitory phenomenal existence among other phe- 
nomena; and then, with its other voice, proceeded to 
recognize him as a member of the intelligible world, 
a "spectator of all time and existence," and gifted with 
the absolute freedom of a will which could be determined 
by nothing but itself. "The solitary," says Aristotle, 
"must be either a god or a beast," and the eighteenth 

149 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

century, in its conception of the individual, seemed to 
oscillate between the one and the other till Kant, awak- 
ing to the impossibility of omitting either aspect of his 
being, demanded that he should be conceived as both 
at once. Kant thus set the problem of the future ; and 
if he did not solve it, he at least showed the futility of any 
narrow or one-sided solution and the direction in which 
an adequate solution could alone be sought. In short, 
Kant asked the question to which the nineteenth century, 
in all its philosophical reflection, has been striving to 
find an answer. 

For in philosophy, as in other departments of knowl- 
edge, the work of the nineteenth century has been one 
of mediation and reconciliation. It has been an en- 
deavor to break down the sharp antithesis of philo- 
sophical and scientific theories that was characteristic 
of an earlier time. In the writings of the greatest think- 
ers, the oppositions of materialism and spiritualism, 
of sensationalism and idealism, of empiricism and a priori 
speculation, of individualism and socialism, all the great 
oppositions of theoretical and practical philosophy, which 
formerly were held to be absolute and irreconcilable, 
have been modified, restated, reduced to the relative 
antagonism of the different aspects of one truth. The 
great controversies of the past have thus passed into a 
new phase, in which absolute statements pro and con 
have become, as it were, antiquated ; and the question is 
no longer whether a particular doctrine or its opposite 
is true, but what are the elements of truth and error in 
each of them, and how we can attain to a comprehensive 
view of things, in which justice is done to both. And if 
it be asked, what are the principles or ideas that have 
suggested this reconciling work, and have been the 
guides of the greatest scientific or philosophic writers 
in attempting to achieve it, I think the answer must 
be that the\^ are the idea of organic unity, and, as im- 

150 



PHILOSOPHY 

plied in that, the idea of development. Goethe and Hegel, 
in Germany ; Comte, in France ; Darwin and Spencer, in 
England, are writers who almost span the whole range 
of difference in modern thought; but they, and a multi- 
tude of others in every department of study, have been 
inspired by the ideas of organism and development. 
And they have all used them somewhat in the same 
way to turn the edge of the old controversial weapons, 
or to lift thought above the " yes " and " no " of opposing 
dogmatisms. It is true that the definitions or interpre- 
tations of the ideas of organism and development given 
by these writers are very different, and often, indeed, 
so sharply opposed that they seem to bring back the 
old controversies in a new form. But this does not 
alter the significance of the general fact ; for, in the first 
place, the use of an idea by any writer is by no means 
always limited by his own interpretation of it; and, in 
the second place, the true interpretation of the idea is 
that which contains the secret of its power and prevalence, 
and it must in the long run gain the victory over all 
other interpretations of it. We may, therefore, fairly 
say that these ideas have been the marked ideas of the 
century, the conscious or unconscious stimulus of its 
best thought; and that they have been working, and 
are working still, in the direction of a deeper and more 
comprehensive irenicon between the different tendencies 
of the human mind than has been attained in any pre- 
vious stage of the history of philosophy. 

Against such a general characterization of an age, 
there is the same objection which Burke indicated when 
he said that " he could not draw up an indictment against 
a nation." We are taking a distant and general view 
of a period, in which all its inequalities of movement, 
all the ebb and flow of opinion, are lost sight of, and only 
one main current of thought is visible. We may get 
a step nearer to the subject by distinguishing three 

151 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

periods in the century, in which there is a partial differ- 
ence of tendency. The first period, which we may rough- 
ly define as lasting well on into the 30's, is, in the main, 
a period of construction, of creative thought, in which 
the great germinating ideas that distinguished the cen- 
tury are more or less adequately expressed in different 
countries, and in which they receive a first, somewhat 
hasty, application to all departments of human knowl- 
edge. Idealistic philosophy, which gave the fullest 
expression to those ideas, seems for a time to carry all 
before it in Germany ; and a similar movement of thought, 
less definitely reflective or speculative, enriches the litera- 
ture of other countries. In the next period, lasting until 
the 70 's, the new ideas do not lose their hold upon men's 
minds, but there is a certain critical recoil against them, 
a tendency to explain them away. The first prema- 
ture synthesis of idealistic philosoplry is attacked by a 
scepticism, which seems at times as if it would measure 
back the whole way to the individualistic materialism 
of an earlier age, or which only avoids that extreme 
to fall into a scientific agnosticism, at first sight 
even more hostile to the claims of philosophy. But 
the lesson of Kant could never be altogether forgotten, 
nor could the negative or sceptical tendencies of the 
Critique of Pure Reason be permanent^ separated 
from the positive results of his later writings. And 
the great scientific movement of the time, which at first 
seemed to draw away all interest from speculative in- 
quiry, tended in the long run, especially by the advance 
of biological study, to raise metaplrysical questions 
which the methods of science were incapable of answer- 
ing. Hence, in the latest decades of the century, there 
has come a revival of interest in philosophy, and es- 
pecially in the idealistic philosophy of its first years. 
But if philosophy has revived, it is in a more critical and 
cautious form, and accompanied by a clear consciousness 

152 



PHILOSOPHY 

that the only true idealism is that which is able to absorb 
and assimilate all the data supplied by empirical investi- 
gation, and do justice to all the results of the special 
sciences. The general movement of thought in the nine- 
teenth century has thus, on the whole, taken an idealistic 
direction; but there has come with it also a deeper con- 
sciousness of the immense difficulty of a comprehensive 
synthesis; of the inefficacy of any easy monism or opti- 
mism, that would pluck the fruit of knowledge before 
it is ripe; of the infinite labor and patience, the sym- 
pathetic appreciation of the opposing views of others, 
and constant and unsparing criticism of our own, which 
are needed for the construction of a true philosophy. 

II 

In a short article like this, it is impossible to give more 
than a few indications of the way in which this three- 
fold schema of the history of nineteenth - century phi- 
losophy should be filled up. To give any definite im- 
pression, the writer must, so to speak, put on the seven- 
leagued boots of Jack the Giant Killer; in other words, 
however conscious he may be of the truth that dolus 
latet in generalibus, he must generalize and be content 
to mention only a few leading names in illustration of 
the tendencies of thought of which he speaks. 

It is the instinct of each new generation to vindi- 
cate its freedom by rebelling against the authority of 
its predecessors; and when a new idea begins to in- 
fluence human thought, it usually, on its first appearance, 
shows that side which is most antagonistic to the spirit 
of the past. Thus the peculiar nineteenth - century 
movement begins with a reassertion of the universal as 
against the individual, which is so emphatic that it looks 
like a return to Spinozism. Schelling is the most prom- 
inent philosophical representative of this tendency. In 

153 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the works which he wrote about the beginning of the 
century, he broke away even from the universalized 
individualism of Fichte, and gave emphatic prominence 
to the great philosophical commonplace — which had 
been almost forgotten by the previous age — that there is 
an identity which is below or above all distinction, and 
that the universe is one through all its multiplicity, and 
permanent through all its changes. His maxim — that 
there are none but quantitative differences in things, 
and that all these, even the difference of mind and mat- 
ter, disappear in the "indifference" of the Absolute — 
was like a declaration of war against the "enlighten- 
ment." It meant that philosophy was no longer con- 
tent to regard the whole as the sum of the parts, but 
could look upon the distinction of the parts only as a 
differentiation of the whole. With Schelling, indeed, 
this differentiation was in danger of being reduced to a 
mere appearance and the unity of the Absolute was on 
the point of vanishing in a bare or abstract identity. 
But his strong assertion of the unity beneath all differ- 
ence, of the priority of the universal to all particulars, 
was perhaps necessaty, ere the true conception of the 
organic unity of the world could be arrived at. And 
the correction soon came with Hegel, who maintained 
that the absolute is "not substance, but subject." For 
this meant that the absolute is a self-differentiating prin- 
ciple, realizing itself in a world of difference which is no 
mere appearance, but its own essential manifestation; 
and again — what is the counterpart or complementary 
truth to this — that in the world there are "degrees of 
reality," and that " mind is higher in degree than nature. " 
But these ideas could hardly have been understood until 
the uncompromising assertion of the absolute unity 
had been made, and until the subjectivity of the Kantian 
and Fichtean points of view had once for all been set 
aside. 

154 



PHILOSOPHY 

The philosophy of Hegel derives its power from the 
way in which it strikes what, as I have already said, 
was the kej^-note of the nineteenth-century philosophy. 
In the first place, it is a philosophy of reconciliation, 
which attempts, through a criticism of the oppositions 
of philosophical theory, to reach a point of view in which 
they are all seen to be subordinated to the unity of one 
principle. His attack upon the "law of contradiction," 
as formulated by scholastic logicians, meant simply 
that absolute distinctions are unmeaning, and that the 
only real differences are differences within a unit3 T . On 
this principle he tried to show that all the oppositions 
of thought and things which have found expression in 
philosophy are relative oppositions, which find a so- 
lution or reconciliation in the life and movement of the 
whole. Hence he maintained that in all the great con- 
troversies that have divided the world, in metaphysics 
and psychology, in ethics and theology, the combatants 
have really been co-operators. Both sides, to use the 
expression of Leibnitz, have been "right in what they 
affirmed and wrong only in what they denied." And 
their conflict has been the means of the evolution of a 
fuller truth than that which was contained in the doc- 
trine of either party. In the second place, Hegel is 
guided throughout by the conception of the universe — 
and, in a sense, of every even relatively independent ex- 
istence in it — as an organism, every element in which 
implies the whole, every change in which is a phase of 
its self-evolution. For his logical doctrine of the "no- 
tion " (as Begriff is commonly translated) means simply 
that we do not see anything truly until we comprehend 
it as a whole, in which one principle manifests itself 
through all the difference of the parts and — just through 
their distinctions and their relations — binds itself into 
one individual — reality. In this sense, everything just 
so far as it has an independent individual existence at 

T55 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

all is an organism. Lastly,, while thus conceiving the 
universe as organic, Hegel maintained that it is not a 
natural but a spiritual organism. For the limited 
scope of a natural organism and its process cannot be 
regarded as commensurate with a universe, which com- 
prehends all existence, whether classed as organic or in- 
organic. Only the conscious and self-conscious unity 
of mind can overreach and overcome such extreme 
antagonisms, and reduce them all to elements in the 
realization of its own life. We must, therefore, think 
of the universe as an organism which includes nature, 
but manifests its ultimate principle only in the life of 
man. We may add that in all this Hegel attempted to 
show that he was only working out in the sphere of spec- 
ulative thought what Christianity had already expressed 
for the ordinary consciousness, according to its half- 
pictorial methods of representation. 

While this is the general meaning of Hegelianism, 
it must be added that Hegel was more successful in formu- 
lating these ideas in their logical or metaphysical form 
than in appfying them to the results of the special sci- 
ences of nature, which he only knew at second hand; 
or even to the different provinces of the spiritual life and 
history of man, which he had studied more thoroughly. 
In both cases his data were very incomplete, and the 
scientific interpretation of them had not then been carried 
far enough to prepare — as, according to Hegel himself, 
it should prepare — for the final interpretation of philos- 
ophy. There is another circumstance to be taken into 
account, a circumstance which deeply affected Hegel 
and all the writers of his time. In the slow process of 
human history the new wine is always at first poured 
into old bottles, and only when the old bottles burst is 
an effort made to find new ones that will contain it 
safely. Hence the development of the new spirit in 
philosophy seemed often to go hand-in-hand with a 

156 



PHILOSOPHY 

movement of restoration in politics and religion which 
was not easily distinguishable from reaction. Just as 
the politicians of the time could find for the newly awak- 
ened spirit of nationality no other embodiment than the 
institutions of the ancient regime, and tried to revive the 
old system destroyed by the Revolution, with only a few 
repairs and additions, so the great philosophical writers 
sought generally to reanimate the old scheme of life 
and thought by means of the new ideas, rather than 
completely to recast it in accordance with them. Hence, 
although Hegel's principle of evolution was as hostile 
to reaction as to revolution, as hostile to an authoritative 
system that denied the rights of the individual as to mere 
individualism, his particular doctrines, both in politics 
and theology, took a strongly conservative tinge. When 
we look more closely we see that it is only as restoration 
is at the same time reformation, as it makes the old 
forms the expression of a new life, that Hegel could log- 
ically defend them. But the form which he gave to his 
ideas was perplexing ; it tended in many minds to iden- 
tify the principle of development, which means that the 
future can only spring out of the past and the present, 
with the defence of the status quo in Church and State ; 
and, on the other hand, to confuse the forces of progress 
with those of revolution. Thus the mediating, recon- 
ciling power of the new doctrine was for a time obscured, 
and its effect in raising men's minds above the old levels 
of controversy was delayed. 

Ill 

In other countries during the earlier decades of the 
century a similar movement of thought is discernible, 
though it was not carried out anywhere with the same 
philosophical thoroughness as in Germany. In France 
the organic idea did not find any very powerful repre- 

157 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

sentative till the time of Comte, and even in his expression 
of it there is a certain ambiguity. In his well-known 
law of development, indeed, he seems to reproduce the 
individualistic doctrine of the eighteenth century, and 
to deny the reality of the universal, both in its theological 
and its philosophical form. But already in the last vol- 
ume of his Positive Philosophy, when he begins to deal 
with human society, he maintains that " the individual 
man is an abstraction, and that there is nothing real 
but humanity"; and in his Positive Politics he treats 
this unity of mankind as not only real, but divine. 
In that work, moreover, he makes another step. Re- 
jecting at once the obstructions of the individualists 
and those of the socialists, he rises to the conception 
of a social organism, which gives play to the compet- 
itive energ}' of individuals, and yet binds them to- 
gether in its own more comprehensive life. In Eng- 
land, before the close of the eighteenth century, the 
same spirit had found a representative in Burke, 
who rejected entirely the idea of a social contract, 
and maintained that the State is based on an un- 
conscious reason of society, which is far wiser than 
the conscious reason of even the wisest individuals. 
In general, however, the spiritualistic movement of the 
earlier part of the century took, among the English- 
speaking people, rather a poetic and literary than a 
philosophical form. And the imperfect attempts of Cole- 
ridge to transplant German ideas into England — attempts 
followed up with signal energy by Frederic Denison 
Maurice — hardly constitute an exception to this rule. 
In this connection, also, as one who partly grasped 
the organic idea of social life and its development, but 
who gave it a somewhat imperfect and even contra- 
dictory expression, I may mention a later writer, Thomas 
Carlyle, whose imaginative genius and moral enthu- 
siasm did much to breathe a new life into history. 

158 



PHILOSOPHY 

Though not a philosopher in any technical sense, he 
was, like his friend Emerson, a vehicle of philosophical 
ideas, and he contributed greatly to scatter the seed 
of idealism upon British soil. His Calvinistic pessi- 
mism, indeed, makes a curious contrast with the fearless 
optimism of the new country which is characteristic of 
Emerson; but whether great men are to be regarded 
as "heroes to be worshipped," according to the teaching 
of the one, or as "representative men," who are to be 
followed because they express what all are thinking, 
according to the ideas of the other, we are led, in both 
cases, to a deeper view of the solidarity of human society 
and of its spiritual basis. 

IV 

It is difficult to determine more than approximately 
the beginning of special movements of thought; for 
the different nations of the civilized world are not ex- 
actly contemporaneous in their development, and in 
each nation there are always individuals who lag behind 
the time or hasten on before it. But, speaking gen- 
erally, we may say that as early as the fourth decade 
of the century a certain reaction had set in against the 
conclusions of idealistic philosophy, and especial^ 
against the organic idea of human life; and a tendency 
was even shown to revert, so far as possible, to the meth- 
ods and ideas of the eighteenth centur}^. The reasons 
for this change are various. In Germany the succession 
of great philosophers had come to an end, and their 
followers were smaller men, who were inclined too much 
to repeat the formulas, but had little of the creative 
power, of their predecessors. More attention, therefore, 
began to be paid to the protests of writers like Herbart 
and Schopenhauer, who, even in the hour of its triumph, 
had criticised and attacked the prevailing philosophy. 

159 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Again, the physical sciences were advancing by " leaps 
and bounds," and there was a growing inclination to 
believe in the universal validity of the mechanical 
methods of explanation to which they owed their suc- 
cess, and even in those sociological and historical 
studies to which the idealistic philosophy had given 
so great an impetus. The progress of empirical re- 
search and the increase of the materials of knowledge 
caused much of the work of Hegel and his followers 
to seem inadequate, if not entirely to set it aside. 
Even in Germany, where the new ideas had taken a 
distinctly philosophical shape, they seemed to lose their 
hold in the controversies that attended the breaking 
up of the Hegelian school; and in other countries, 
where they never found such a systematic expression, 
they were even less able to resist the attack now made 
upon them. Furthermore, as I have already indicated, 
writers of an idealistic tendency, in their recoil from 
the enlightenment, had devoted themselves so much to 
an appreciation of institutions derived from the past 
that they seemed to have no eyes for the defects of 
these institutions, and to confuse evolution with resto- 
ration. 

The general result of all these influences was, then, 
to discredit philosophy and exalt science, so far as might 
be, into its place. Either the abstract methods of the 
physical sciences were proclaimed as adequate for the 
discovery of all truth, or, if this was seen to be impossible, 
agnosticism was professed in regard to all subjects to 
which these methods could not be applied. Even the 
phenomena of life were supposed to be capable of ex- 
planation by the action and reaction of the parts or ele- 
ments of the physical organism, and Huxley looked 
forward to the time when man with all his spiritual en- 
dowments should be shown to be only the "cunningest 
of nature's clocks." The new science of psychophysics, 

1 60 



PHILOSOPHY 

which arose in Germany and has been cultivated with so 
much zeal by Wundt and others in all civilized countries, 
seemed to carry the method of physics into the investi- 
gation of mind, and some of its students were ready 
to maintain that it was the only psychology that de- 
served the name of science. Darwin's great work on 
the Origin of Species, in so far as it set aside the 
idea of special creation and referred the "purposive- 
ness" of organic structures to a process in which the 
external environment, and not any inward power of 
self-adaptation, was the controlling factor, seemed to 
bring a new reinforcement to the same way of thinking. 
And he and his followers were not slow to apply the 
theory of natural selection to the life of man, as well as 
to that of plants and animals. Finally, the historical 
studies, which were now cultivated with an energy to 
an extent hitherto unexampled, and immensely extended 
the knowledge of the process whereby the present has 
grown out of the past, were invaded by a similar spirit ; 
and the historical method was maintained to be a solvent 
which could disintegrate all metaphysical conceptions 
of ethics or politics or even of theology. The account 
of the genesis of any idea was regarded as reducing its 
claims to the level of the elements or rudiments out of 
which it had sprung, and thus as enabling the scientific 
historian to explain, or explain away, the spiritual by 
the natural in all human life and experience. All things 
appeared again to be pointing towards a system of thought 
which would resolve ethics and psychology into phys- 
iology, and physiology into chemistry and physics. 

At the same time the victory of this tendency was 
always more apparent than real. In the first place, 
" out of the eater came forth meat " — that very advance 
of the special sciences, which in its earlier stages had 
tended to throw all speculative thought into the shade, 
in the long run caused the need of philosophy to be again 
L 161 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

felt. In particular, the study of development in the 
organic world, which had received so great a stimulus 
from the work of Darwin, could not be carried on without 
the aid of higher conceptions than were required for the 
guidance of the physicist. The hypothesis of natural 
selection might expel the idea of design in the cruder 
form of a special creation of every distinct species ; and 
the emphasis which it had laid upon the outward con- 
ditions of growth might seem unfavorable to the higher 
conception of an immanent teleology of the organism, 
but it was confessed by its author to be an incomplete 
theory of development, and Darwin himself, when he 
turned his attention to the evolution of man, found it 
necessary to supplement it by what might be called the 
converse theory of sexual selection ; thus adding a prin- 
ciple of co-operation to his first principle of competition. 
And Mr. Spencer, who denned growth as a process of 
integration and differentiation, little as he might himself 
intend it, was really putting into popular language the 
Hegelian idea of evolution — an idea which necessarily 
involved the conception of a self-determined end. Evolu- 
tionists might cling, as thejr still cling, to the belief that, 
though constantly and necessarily speaking of purpose, 
they could eliminate it from the result of their investiga- 
tions by the hypothesis of Darwin, or, subsequently, 
of Weissmann; but their discussions, especially when 
they were extended to the historical development of man, 
could not but reawaken the great controversy whether in 
the ultimate explanation of things it is more reasonable 
to "level up," or to "level down," to explain the higher 
by the lower, or the lower by the higher. That both 
explanations are necessary, nay, that no teleology can 
be of much worth which does not presuppose a thorough 
inquiry into the causal connections of particular phe- 
nomena, was admitted by all modern idealists. But 
they began to press the question whether the unity of 

162 



PHILOSOPHY 

the whole is not prior to its distribution into parts, and 
does not govern their relations with each other; and, 
in particular, whether it is possible in the case of organic 
beings, and especially of organic beings possessed of 
consciousness and self -consciousness, to be satisfied with 
a mode of explanation that treats them as mere collec- 
tions of material elements which act and react externally 
upon each other. Whatever its value as a provisional 
hypothesis, can such a mode of explanation be finally 
regarded as adequate for the explanation of the nature 
of the world as a whole, or, indeed, of any one existence 
in it, that has even a relative independence or separate 
being of its own? 

But, in the second place, a revival of the idealistic 
philosophy was made necessary by an obvious weak- 
ness which clung to the scientific materialism of the 
nineteenth century from the very beginning. The 
Kantian criticism of knowledge, which could not be en- 
tirely neglected, had convincingly proved that in our 
experience objects can be known only in relation to a 
subject, and matter only in relation to mind. But, if so, 
how could the latter be explained by the former? Even 
to those who had not fully understood this doctrine, it 
became evident that mind is at least co-ordinate with 
matter, and cannot be treated as a mere " epiphenome- 
non" of it. Mr. Spencer, therefore, had to take refuge 
in the strange notion that we are possessed of " two con- 
sciousnesses " : the consciousness of ideas within us, and 
the consciousness of motions without us; and that nei- 
ther of these can be resolved into the other, though both 
are the phenomena of an unknowable Absolute. It is 
in this citadel of ignorance that Huxley tries to intrench 
himself; but the place was taken before it could be oc- 
cupied. The self-contradiction of an unknowable Ab- 
solute, and the equal though less obvious self-contradic- 
tion of a dualistic separation between two aspects of 

163 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

our life — which, as a matter of fact, are never, and logical- 
ly can never be, divided — could not long be maintained 
against a criticism armed with the weapons of Kant and 
his idealistic successors. Already, in the 50's, the cry 
" Back to Kant " was raised in Germany, and, not long 
after, it led in England and America to a renewed study 
of the German idealistic writers, in which Dr. Hutchison 
Sterling and the late Professor Green took a leading 
part. It was soon obvious to every one who had learned 
the lesson of critical philosophy that the agnostic dual- 
ism of Mr. Spencer was due to a fundamental miscon- 
ception of what is meant by the subjectivity of knowl- 
edge. It was pointed out that if we have the conscious- 
ness of object and subject only in relation to each other, 
it is not necessary to seek for the principle of their unity 
in any Tertium Quid which is neither the one nor the 
other. That which Mr. Spencer sought in an unknow- 
able Absolute was "in our mouths and in our hearts"; 
it was to be found in the inseparable unity of experience, 
in which the inward and the outward are correlative 
elements. Agnosticism was a sort of spiritual refuge 
for the destitute constructed by those who had renounced 
their heritage: who, in other words, had by their ab- 
stractions separated the elements of experience from 
each other, and were thus forced to seek beyond expe- 
rience for the unity which they had lost. The true rem- 
edy for the evil was to give up such abstract ways of 
thinking and to learn to "think things together;" in 
other words, to recognize the organic relation of the 
inner and the outer life, and to explain the parts by the 
whole, and not the whole by the artificially severed parts. 

V 

The great distinguishing feature of the last two dec- 
ades of the century has been a movement of approxima- 

164 



PHILOSOPHY 

tion, partly conscious and partly unconscious, between 
the representatives of science, and particularly of those 
sciences that deal with special aspects or elements of 
human life, on the one hand, and the representatives of 
idealistic philosophy on the other. The reconciling 
ideas of an earlier time have become better understood 
and have shown more effectively their power to recon- 
cile. Not that this mediating power had previously 
been entirely unfelt. Even in the time when philosophy 
was most discredited in Germany, Lotze, in whom a 
cautious critical temper was combined with deep moral 
and religious sympathies, and a practical knowledge 
of the biological and medical sciences with careful 
studies of Kant and Hegel, sought to show how an 
idealistic view of the universe and of human life 
could be maintained consistently with the fullest recog- 
nition of scientific methods and results. And though 
his system was, on the whole, rather a compromise than 
a true reconciliation of philosophy and science, yet it 
has undoubtedly had very great influence in modifying 
the ideas of the opposing schools of thought and nar- 
rowing the ground of controversy between them. Thus 
the old English empirical psychology, which was repre- 
sented by the Mills and by Mr. Bain, has gradually 
widened its scope in the hands of writers like Professor 
Ward and Mr. Stout, at first probably through the study 
of Herbart and then by contact with the revived ideal- 
istic movement. On the other hand, we may notice how 
idealistic writers, like Mr. Bradley and Mr. Bosanquet, 
have tried to absorb every lesson that can be learned 
from empiricism, and to shun with the utmost care the 
very suspicion of anything like dogmatism. Mr. Brad- 
ley's denunciations of a "too easy monism" and a phi- 
losophy that turns the living world into a " ballet of blood- 
less categories" are too well known to be more than re- 
ferred to. Nor is this the place to discuss whether his 

165 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

fear of such a result has not sometimes led him into com- 
promises which are inconsistent with his own funda- 
mental principle that the world must be conceived as 
an intelligible system. In any case, we may fairly point 
to his work and to the work of other writers animated 
by a similar spirit, as showing the growing prevalence 
of that reconciling spirit which seeks at once to do justice 
to all the results of empirical inquiry and of the inves- 
tigations of the special sciences, and yet at the same 
time to give them a new interpretation in the light 
of an idealistic philosophy. It is impossible within our 
limits to illustrate this view of the tendencies of the 
time by further reference to the recent philosophical 
literature of England and America, or of Germany and 
France. Still less can I refer to the numerous books on 
special departments of inquiry in ethics and theology, 
in sociology and in history, in which the "ideally or- 
ganic view of life and the world," as we may call it, has 
shown its mediating and reconciling influence. Nor 
can I do more than refer to the counter current of pessi- 
mism, which has found its most distinguished repre- 
sentatives in Hartmann and Nietzsche; the former a 
man of great wealth of thought and dialectical power, 
whose philosophy is idealistic in all but its ultimate 
principle, and is indeed pessimistic only by an exag- 
geration of the opposition between the conscious and 
the unconscious working of reason; the latter, hardly 
a philosopher at all but rather a writer of pungent 
and suggestive aphorisms, winged with indignant pas- 
sion against prevalent opinions — aphorisms which al- 
ways contradict some one, and often contradict each 
other. From Nietzsche at his best we may receive a 
useful warning against too easily satisfying ourselves 
with the commonplaces of idealistic optimism; from 
Hartmann we may derive very considerable help in es- 
timating the difficulties that have to be met by those 

166 



PHILOSOPHY 

who would seek to work out idealistic principles into a 
systematic view of the world. But, without attempting 
to enter upon any more detailed criticism of these or 
other important writers of recent years, I shall devote 
the space that remains to one general thought as to the 
present state of controversy, in relation to the funda- 
mental principles of philosophy. 

VI 

Ever since the revival of the study of Kant, the main 
conflict in philosophy has ceased to lie between materi- 
alism and idealism. It has rather become a conflict 
between those who take up some position analogous 
to that of Kant and those who seek to carry out the 
idealistic principle to all its consequences. For the 
essential characteristic of Kant's position lay in his 
sharp division between the spheres of knowledge and of 
faith — between a knowledge which was confined to 
phenomena and their connection in experience, and a 
faith of practical reason, which reached beyond experi- 
ence to apprehend that which is noumenally real. Even 
the agnosticism of Mr. Spencer might be regarded as 
a modification of the Kantian point of view, in so far 
as his denial of the possibility of knowing the absolute 
is based on Mansel's version of the Kantian antinomies ; 
while his description of the "vague consciousness" of 
the absolute which he bids us worship may be regarded 
as representing that faith which, in Kant's view, enables 
us to pierce the veil of the phenomena and grasp the ulti- 
mate reality of things. And in the latter part of the cen- 
tury there has been a continual germination of similar 
theories, theories agreeing with the Kantian philosophy 
at least in making some kind of dualistic division be- 
tween the sphere of clearly defined knowledge and the 
sphere of ideal or spiritual faith, and also in confining 

167 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the former to phenomena while the latter is held to be 
capable of rising in some way from the phenomenal to 
the real. One of the earliest fruits of the Neo-Kantian 
movement in Germany was Lange's History of Mate- 
rialism, which insisted on the strictest interpretation 
of the lesson of the Critique of Pure Reason, that 
scientific knowledge is confined to the empirical and phe- 
nomenal, but which maintained also the chartered free- 
dom of imagination to feed our hopes with the idea of a 
world not realized, or realizable, under the conditions 
of finite experience. And, with a different aim, but in 
a similar spirit, Ritschl, borrowing some of his weapons 
from Lotze, sought to take away from philosophy the 
right to investigate the spiritual truths of religion, and 
maintained that such truths were given in a kind of 
intuition of faith which is above criticism and which 
some of his followers identify, like Kant, with the de- 
mands or postulates of the moral consciousness. Other 
writers, following Schopenhauer, have sought to emanci- 
pate the will from the intelligence and to give it an inde- 
pendent power of estimating values. The great effort 
to bring science and philosophy together — which, as 
we have seen, has characterized the later years of the 
century — has itself naturally given rise to many such 
dualistic compromises, of which Lotze's philosophy was 
among the earliest. And it is partly to Lotze's influence 
that we owe the tendency, visible in some of the most 
important recent contributions to philosophy, to regard 
our actual experience as having an intuitive complete- 
ness which is beyond all analysis, while reflective 
thought on the other hand is conceived as having a 
purely analytic and discursive operation, which can 
grasp only the severed fragments of the given realitj 7 ' 
and connect them externally to each other, but which 
can never restore the organic whole again. Here, too, 
we seem by another way to be landed in the same con- 

168 



PHILOSOPHY 

elusion, viz., that we are perpetually poised between 
an ideal which we cannot verify, but which yet is held 
to be our only vision of reality, and a definite result of 
knowledge, which only gives us what is abstract and 
phenomenal. Yet it is difficult to understand how such 
an organic idea of the universe can exist except for the 
thinking intelligence, and how the thought that grasps it 
can be separated from the discursive thought by which 
the different elements of reality are brought into relation. 
How, indeed, can there be any thought which is not 
both discursive and intuitive at once, any thought which 
connects the parts without resting upon the unity of 
the whole to which they belong? 

All these different compromises are really different 
forms of the Kantian dualism, but they supply con- 
venient cities of refuge for those who are unwilling to 
admit that faith is but implicit reason, and that it is 
always possible to translate its intuitions of truth into 
explicit logic. There is much excuse, indeed, in many 
cases for such unwillingness when we consider how 
often reason has presented itself as purely a critical 
or dissolving power, and how often abstract theories 
which grasp only one aspect of things have been set 
forth as complete explanations of religion or morality 
or some other of the higher interests of life. It has al- 
ways to be kept in view that it is in something like im- 
mediate perception that truth is given in the first instance, 
and that philosophy, therefore, must always be in a 
sense toiling after the intuitions of faith. Yet, on the 
other hand, to hold that there is anywhere an abstract 
division between the two is to hold that faith is essen- 
tially irrational ; it is to exalt it above reason in a way 
that inevitably leads in the end to its being depressed 
below reason. If, however, this view can be main- 
tained it must lead in the long run to the rejection of 
all dualistic compromises. And there are already many 

169 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

who hold that after the unstable equilibrium of the Kant- 
ian theory has been shaken there is no secure standing- 
ground for philosophy short of a thorough-going idealism. 
Yet even they have learned by experience how dangerous 
it is to snatch prematurely at the readiest idealistic in- 
terpretation of facts; and they are aware how easy it is 
to fall into a simple optimistic theory, which slurs over 
difficulties instead of solving them. They know that if 
Hegel or any one ever pretended, or could reasonably 
be interpreted as pretending, to construe the universe 
a priori, the pretence was futile, and that a true and 
valuable idealism can be reached only through the in- 
terpretation of the data of experience by the special 
sciences, and the reinterpretation of the results of these 
sciences by philosophy. They hold, in short, that if 
the well-known saying of Hegel is to be taken for truth, 
both of its clauses must be equally emphasized, and 
that no philosophy can safely maintain that "what 
is rational is actual " which has not gone through all 
the effort that is necessary to prove that " what is actual 
is rational." 

Edward Caird. 



MEDICINE 



MEDICINE 



INTRODUCTION 

COR countless generations the prophets and kings of 
* humanity have desired to see the things which men 
have seen, and to hear the things which men have heard 
in the course of the wonderful nineteenth century. To 
the call of the watchers on the towers of progress there 
had been the one sad answer — the people sit in darkness 
and in the shadow of death. Politically, socially, and 
morally the race had improved, but for the unit, for the 
individual, there was little hope. Cold philosophy shed 
a glimmer of light on his path, religion in its various 
guises illumined his sad heart, but neither availed to 
lift the curse of suffering from the sin-begotten son of 
Adam. In the fulness of time, long expected, long de- 
layed, at last Science emptied upon him from the horn of 
Amalthea blessings which cannot be enumerated, bless- 
ings which have made the century forever memorable; 
and which have followed each other with a rapidity so 
bewildering that we know not what next to expect. To 
us in the medical profession, who deal with this unit, 
and measure progress by the law of the greatest hap- 
piness to the greatest number, to us whose work is with 
the sick and suffering, the great boon of this wonderful 
century, with which no other can be compared, is the 
fact that the leaves of the tree of Science have been 
for the healing of the nations. Measure as we may the 
progress of the world — materially, in the advantages 
of steam, electricity, and other mechanical appliances; 

173 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

sociologically, in the great improvement in the condi- 
tions of life; intellectually, in the diffusion of education; 
morally, in a possibly higher standard of ethics — there 
is no one measure which can compare with the decrease 
of physical suffering in man, woman, and child when 
stricken by disease or accident. This is the one fact of 
supreme personal import to every one of us. This is the 
Promethean gift of the century to man. 

THE GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE 

The century opened auspiciously, and those who were 
awake saw signs of the dawn. The spirit of Science was 
brooding on the waters. In England the influence of 
John Hunter stimulated the younger men to the stud} 7 
of the problems of anatomy and pathology. On the 
Continent the great Boorhaave — the Batavian Hippoc- 
rates — had taught correct ways in the study of the clin- 
ical aspects of disease, and the work of Haller had given 
a great impetus to physiology. The researches of Mor- 
gagni had, as Virchow had remarked, introduced ana- 
tomical thinking into medicine. But theories still con- 
trolled practice. Under the teaching of Cullen, the old 
idea that humors were the seat of disease had given place 
to a neuro-pathology which recognized the paramount 
influence of the nervous system in disease. His col- 
league at Edinburgh, Brown, brought forward the attrac- 
tive theory that all diseases could be divided into two 
groups, the one caused D3 7 excess of excitement — the 
sthenic — the other by a deficiency — the asthenic — each 
having its appropriate treatment, the one by depletion, 
the other by stimulation. In a certain measure Hah- 
nemann's theory of homoeopathy was a reaction against 
the prevalent theories of the day, and has survived 
through the century, though in a much modified form. 
Some of his views were as follows : 

174 



MEDICINE 

" The only vocation of the physician is to heal ; theo- 
retical knowledge is of no use. In a case of sickness he 
should only know what is curable and the remedies. Of 
the diseases he cannot know anything except the symp- 
toms. There are internal changes, but it is impossible 
to learn what they are; symptoms alone are accessible; 
with their removal by remedies the disease is removed. 
Their effects can be studied in the healthy only. They 
act on the sick by causing a disease similar to that which 
is to be combated, and which dissolves itself into this 
similar affection. The full doses required to cause 
symptoms in the well are too large to be employed as 
remedies for the sick. The healing power of a drug 
grows in an inverse proportion to its substance. He 
says, literally : ' Only potencies are homoeopathic med- 
icines/ 'I recognize nobody as my follower but him 
who gives medicine in so small doses as to preclude the 
perception of anything medicinal in them by means either 
of the senses or of chemistry. ' ' The pellets may be held 
near the young infant when asleep. ' ' Gliding the hand 
over the patient will cure him, provided the manipulation 
is done with firm intention to render as much good with 
it as possible, for its power is in the benevolent will of the 
manipulator. ' Such is the homoeopathy of Hahnemann, 
which is no longer recognized in what they call homoeop- 
athy to-day."— (A. JACOBI.) 

The awakening came in France, In 1801 Bichat, a 
young man, published a work on general anatomy, in 
which he placed the seat of disease, not in the organs, 
but in the tissues or fabrics of which they were com- 
posed, which gave an extraordinary impetus to the in- 
vestigation of pathological changes. Meanwhile, the 
study of the appearances of organs and bodies when 
diseased (morbid anatomy), which had been prosecuted 
with vigor by Morgagni in the eighteenth century, had 
been carried on actively in Great Britain and on the Con- 

175 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

tinent, and the work of Broussais stimulated a more ac- 
curate investigation of local disorders. The discovery 
by Laennec of the art of auscultation, by which, through 
changes in the normal sounds within the chest, various 
diseases of the heart and lungs could be recognized, gave 
an immense impetus to clinical research. The art of per- 
cussion, discovered by Avenbrugger in the eighteenth 
century, and reintroduced by Corvisart, contributed not a 
little to the same. Laennec 's contributions to the study of 
diseases of the lungs, of the heart, and of the abdominal 
organs really laid the foundation of modern clinical 
medicine. A little later Bright published his reseaches 
on diseases of the kidneys, from which we date our knowl- 
edge of this important subject. One of the most com- 
plicated problems of the first half of the century related 
to the differentiation of the fevers. The eruptive fevers, 
measles, scarlet fever, and small-pox, were easily recog- 
nized, and the great group of malarial fevers was well 
known; but there remained the large class of continued 
fevers, which had been a source of worry and dispute 
for many generations. Louis clearly differentiated ty- 
phoid fever, and by the work of his American pupils, 
W. W. Gerhard and Alfred Stille, of Philadelphia, and 
George B. Shattuck, of Boston, typhus and typhoid fe- 
vers were defined as separate and independent affections. 
Relapsing fever, yellow fever, dengue, etc., were also 
distinguished The work of Graves and Stokes, of 
Dublin, of Jenner and Budd, in England, of Drake, Dick- 
son, and Flint, in America, supplemented the labors of 
the French physicians, and by the year i860 the profes- 
sion had reached a sure and safe position on the question 
of the clinical aspects of fevers. 

The most distinguishing feature of the scientific med- 
icine of the century has been the phenomenal results 
which have followed experimental investigations. While 
this method of research is not new, since it was intro- 

176 



MEDICINE 

duced by Galen, perfected by Harvey, and carried on by 
Hunter, it was not until well into the middle of the cen- 
tury that, by the growth of research laboratories, the 
method exercised a deep influence on progress. The 
lines of experimental research have sought to determine 
the functions of the organs in health, the conditions un- 
der which perversion of these functions occur in diseases, 
and the possibility of exercising protective and curative 
influences on the processes of disease. 

The researches of the physiological laboratories have 
enlarged in every direction our knowledge of the great 
functions of life — digestion, assimilation, circulation, 
respiration, and excretion Perhaps in no department 
have the results been more surprising than in the growth 
of our knowledge of the functions of the brain and nerves. 
Not only has experimental science given us clear and 
accurate data upon the localization of certain functions 
of the brain and of the paths of sensatory and of motor 
impulses, but it has opened an entirely new field in the 
diagnosis and treatment of the diseases of these organs, 
in certain directions of a most practical nature, enabling 
us to resort to measures of relief undreamed of even thirty 
years ago. 

The study of physiology and pathology within the past 
half-century has done more to emancipate medicine from 
routine and the thraldom of authority than all the work 
of all the physicians from the days of Hippocrates to 
Jenner, and we are as yet but on the threshold. 

THE GROWTH OF SPECIALISM 

The restriction of the energies of trained students to 
narrow fields in science, while not without its faults, has 
been the most important single factor in the remarka- 
ble expansion of our knowledge. Against the disadvan- 
tages in a loss of breadth and harmony there is the com- 
M 177 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

pensatory benefit of a greater accuracy in the applica- 
tion of knowledge in specialism, as is well illustrated in 
the cultivation of special branches of practice. Dis- 
eases of the skin, of the eye, of the ear, of the throat, of 
the teeth, diseases of women and of children, are now 
studied and practised by men who devote all their time 
to one limited field of work. While not without minor 
evils, this custom has yielded some of the great triumphs 
of the profession. Dentistry, ophthalmology, and gynae- 
cology are branches which have been brought to a state 
of comparative perfection, and very largely by the labors 
of American plrysicians. In the last-named branch the 
blessings which have been brought to suffering women 
are incalculable, not only as regards the minor ailments 
of life, but in the graver and more critical accidents to 
which the sex is liable. 

One of the most remarkable and beneficial reforms of 
the century has been in the attitude of the profession 
and the public to the subject of insanity, and the gradual 
formation of a body of men in the profession who labor 
to find out the cause and means of relief of this most dis- 
tressing of all human maladies. The reform movement 
inaugurated by Tuke in England, by Rush in the United 
States, by Pinel and Esquirol in France, and by Jacobi 
and Hasse in Germany, has spread to all civilized coun- 
tries, and has led not only to an amelioration and im- 
provement in the care of the insane, but to a scientific 
study of the subject which has already been productive 
of much good. In this country, while the treatment of 
the insane is careful and humanitarian, the unfortunate 
affiliation of insanity with politics is still in many States 
a serious hinderance to progress. 

It may be interesting to take a glance at the state of 
medicine in this country at the opening of the nineteenth 
century. There were only three schools of medicine, the 
most important of which were the University of Pennsyl- 

178 



MEDICINE 

vania and the Harvard. There were only two general 
hospitals. The medical education was chiefly in the 
hands of the practitioners, who took students as appren- 
tices for a certain number of years. The well-to-do stu- 
dents and those wishing a better class of education went 
to Edinburgh or London. There were only two or three 
medical journals, and very few books had been pub- 
lished in the country, and the profession was dependent 
entirely upon translations from the French and upon 
English works. The only medical libraries were in con- 
nection with the Pennsylvania Hospital and the New 
York Hospital. The leading practitioners in the early 
years were Rush and Physick, in Philadelphia ; Hossack 
and Mitchill, in New York ; and James Jackson and 
John Collins Warren, in Boston. There were through- 
out the country, in smaller places, men of great capa- 
bilities and energy, such as Nathan Smith, the founder 
of the Medical Schools of Dartmouth and of Yale, and 
Daniel Drake in Cincinnati. After 1830 a remarkable 
change took place in the profession, owng to the leaven 
of French science brought back from Paris by American 
students. Between 1840 and 1870 there was a great in- 
crease in the number of medical schools, but the gen- 
eral standard of education was low — lower, indeed, than 
had ever before been reached in the medical profession. 
The private schools multiplied rapidly, diplomas were 
given on short two-year sessions, and nothing con- 
tributed more to the degeneration of the profession than 
this competition and rivalry between ill-equipped medi- 
cal schools. The reformation, which started at Har- 
vard shortly after 1870, spread over the entire country, 
and the rapid evolution of the medical school has been 
one of the most striking phenomena in the history of 
medicine in the century. University authorities began 
to appreciate the fact that medicine was a great depart- 
ment of knowledge, to be cultivated as a science and 

179 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

promoted as an art. Wealthy men felt that in no better 
way could they contribute to the progress of the race 
than by the establishment of laboratories for the study 
of disease and hospitals for the care of the sick poor. 
The benefactions of Johns Hopkins, of Sims, of Van- 
derbilt, of Pierpont Morgan, of Strathcona, of Mount- 
Stephen, of Payne, and of Levi C. Lane and others have 
placed scientific medicine on a firm basis. 



THE GROWTH OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE 

Sanitary science, hygiene, or preventive medicine 
may claim to be one of the brightest spots in the his- 
tory of the nineteenth century. Public hygiene was 
cultivated among the Egyptians, and in the Mosaic law 
it reached a remarkable organization. The personal hy- 
giene of the Greeks was embraced in the saying, " The 
fair mind in the fair body," and the value of exercise and 
training was fully recognized. The Romans, too, in pub- 
lic and private hygiene, were our superiors in the mat- 
ter of water supply and baths. But modern sanitary 
science has a much wider scope and is concerned with 
the causes of disease quite as much as with the conditions 
under which these diseases prevail. The foundations of 
the science were laid in the last century with Jenner's 
discovery of vaccination. Howard, too, had grasped 
the association of fever with overcrowding in the jails, 
while the possibility of the prevention of scurvy had 
been shown by Captain Cook and by Sir Gilbert Blaine. 

Preventive medicine was a blundering, incomplete sci- 
ence until bacteriology opened unheard-of possibilities 
for the prevention of disease. Before discussing some 
of the victories of preventive medicine it will be well to 
take a brief survey of the growth of the following sub- 
ject: 

180 



MEDICINE 

SCIENCE OF BACTERIOLOGY 

From the brilliant overthrow by Pasteur, in 1861, and 
by Koch and Cohn, in 1876, of the theory of spontaneous 
generation, we may date its modern growth. Wrapped 
up in this theory of spontaneous generation, upon which 
speculation raged centuries before the invention of the 
microscope, lies the history of bacteriology. 

The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers wrestled 
with the question, and very interesting views of the re- 
lation of germ life to disease are preserved to us in their 
manuscripts. With the invention of the microscope we 
can mark the first positive step towards the goal of to- 
day. A Jesuit priest, Kircher, in 1671, was the first to 
investigate putrefying meat, milk, and cheese with the 
crude microscope of his day, and left us indefinite re- 
marks concerning " very minute living worms " found 
therein. Four years after Kircher a Dutch linen mer- 
chant, Antonius von Leeuwenhoek, by improving the 
lenses of the microscope, saw in rain-water, putrefying 
fluids, intestinal contents, and saliva, minute, moving, 
living particles, which he called "animalculae." In 
medical circles of his day these observations aroused 
the keenest interest, and the theory that these " animal- 
culse" might be the cause of all disease was eagerly 
discussed. Pleincz, of Vienna, after much observation 
of various fluids, putrefying and otherwise, wrote in 1762 
that it was his firm belief that the phenomena of diseases 
and the decomposition of animal fluids were wholly 
caused by these minute living things. 

Notwithstanding such assertions, from his day on 
until Pasteur, Koch, and Cohn finally proved its mis- 
conceptions in 1876, the theory of spontaneous generation 
held the upper hand in all discussions upon the question. 

The stimulus to research as to the causes of disease 
along the line of bacterial origin did not entirely cease to 

181 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

be felt, and the names of Pollender and Davaine are 
linked together in the first undoubted discoven T of micro- 
organisms in disease, when the cause of anthrax, a 
disease of cattle, was solved in 1863. Following closely 
upon Davaine 's researches, the primary causes of wound 
infection were worked out, and to the efforts of the British 
surgeon Lister are due the great advances of modern 
surgery. 

In rapid succession the presence of bacteria was clear- 
ly demonstrated in relapsing fever, leprosy, and typhoid 
fever ; but far eclipsing all former discoveries, on account 
of the magnitude of the difficulties encountered and over- 
come, were the brilliant demonstrations of the cause of 
consumption and allied diseases, and that of Asiatic 
cholera, by Dr. Robert Koch in 1882 and in 1884 respec- 
tively. 

From that time onward innumerable workers have 
satisfied the critical scientific world as to the causes of 
pneumonia, diphtheria, tetanus, influenza, and bubonic 
plague, besides many diseases of cattle, horses, sheep, 
and other animals and insects. 

Having glanced hastily at the history of bacteriology, 
we may next consider some facts concerning the germs 
themselves. What are they? To the lay mind the 
words germ, microbe, bacterium, and bacillus often con- 
vey confused ideas of invisible, wriggling, worm-like 
creatures, enemies of mankind, ever on the watch to 
gain a stealthy entrance into our bodies, where they 
wreak harm and death. Scientifically considered, how- 
ever, they are the smallest of living things yet known. 
They are not animals, but are members of the vegetable 
kingdom, and are possessed of definite yet varying shapes. 
They consist of a jelly-like substance called protoplasm, 
which is covered in and held in place by a well-formed 
membrane of a relatively hard and dense character, ex- 
actly similar in composition to the woody fibre of trees. 

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MEDICINE 

According to their shape the bacteria are divided into 
three chief groups, called respectively cocci, bacilli, and 
spirilla. The cocci are spherical bodies and may exist 
singly or in pairs, in fours, in clusters, or in chains. In 
this group we find the smallest bacteria known, many of 
them not over 1-150,000 of an inch in diameter. The 
bacilli are rod-like bodies, varying much in size in differ- 
ent species and in members of the same species. They 
are larger than the cocci, measuring in length from 
1-25,000 of an inch to 1-4000, and in breadth from 
1-125,000 to 1-16,000 of an inch. Many varieties are 
possessed of organs of locomotion called flagella. 

The spirilla resemble the bacilli, except that they are 
twisted into corkscrew shapes, or have gently undulat- 
ing outlines. Upon an average they are much longer 
than the bacilli, one species being very long, measuring 
about 1-600 of an inch. As seen in the natural state 
bacteria are found to be colorless, but it is by the ap- 
plication of various aniline dj^es that they are usual- 
ly studied. These minute plants increase by a simple 
method of division into two equal parts, or by a more 
complex process of forming a seed — the so-called spore — 
which later on develops into the adult form. Under fa- 
vorable conditions they are able to multiply at an enor- 
mous rate; for instance, it has been calculated that a 
bacillus dividing once every hour would at the end of 
twenty-four hours have increased to seventeen millions ; 
and if the division continued at the same rate we should 
find at the end of the third day an incalculable number 
of billions, whose weight would be nearly seven thousand 
five hundred tons ! 

But, fortunately for our welfare, nature by various 
means renders the possibility of such a happening en- 
tirely beyond the slightest chance of realization, her 
greatest barrier being the lack of an adequate food supply. 

The distribution in nature of bacteria is wellnigh uni- 

183 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

versal, occurring as they do in the air we breathe, the 
water and milk we drink, upon the exposed surfaces of 
man and animals, and in their intestinal tracts, and in 
the soil to a depth of about nine feet. But it has been 
noted that at very high altitudes and in glacier ice none 
exist, while in the Arctic regions and at sea far from 
land their numbers are very few. 

The conditions governing their growth involve many 
complex problems, but a few of the chief factors con- 
cerned are moisture, air, food, temperature, and light. 
All bacteria must have moisture, else they die sooner or 
later, depending upon the hardness of the species, and 
none can multiply without it. A supply of air is by no 
means essential to all germs. To some it is absolutely 
necessary, and such germs are called aerobes. To 
others air is wholly detrimental, and they constitute the 
anaerobes, while to the majority of bacteria air supply is 
a matter of indifference, and in consequence they are 
grouped under the term facultative anaerobes. 

The food supply of many consists of dead animal and 
vegetable materials, a few require living tissues, while 
a small number can exist wholly upon mineral salts, or 
even the nitrogen of the air. The lowest temperature at 
which some bacteria can multiply is the freezing-point 
of water, and the highest 170 degrees Fahrenheit. How- 
ever, the average range of temperature suitable to the 
majority lies between 60 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit, 
98 2-5 degrees Fahrenheit being the most suitable for 
the growth of disease -producing germs. Light, ordina- 
rily diffused dajdight, or its absence, is a matter of no 
moment to most germs, whereas direct sunlight is a de- 
stroyer of all bacteria. 

The study of the life histories of these diminutive 
plants excites the wonder of those who make observa- 
tions upon them. It is truly marvellous to know that 
these bacteria can accomplish in their short lives of pos- 

184 



MEDICINE 

sibly a few hours or days feats which would baffle the 
cleverest of chemists if given years of a lifetime to work 
upon. They give to the farmer the good quality of his 
crops, to the dairyman superior butter and cheese ; they 
assist in large measure in freeing our rivers and lakes 
from harmful pollutions. Here it should be strongly 
emphasized that those bacteria which cause disease are 
only of a few species, all others contributing to our wel- 
fare in countless ways. 

Quite as astonishing is the discovery that within the 
root-knobs of pease and beans live bacteria which by 
splitting up mineral salts containing nitrogen, and by 
absorbing nitrogen from the air, give it over to the plant 
so that it is enabled to grow luxuriantly, whereas, with- 
out their presence, the tiller of the soil might fertilize the 
ground in vain. It is quite possible that not alone pease 
and beans, but all grasses and plants and trees depend 
upon the presence of such germs for their very existence, 
which in turn supply man and animals with their means 
of existence. Hence we see that these nitrifying bac- 
teria, as they are called, if swept out of existence, would 
be the cause of cessation of all life upon the globe. And 
arguing backward, one prominent authority states it as 
his belief that the first of all life on this earth were those 
lowly forms of plants which only required the nitrogen 
of air or salts to enable them to multiply. 

Limiting observation now to the sphere of medicine, 
it will be readily perceived that the presence of bacterial 
life in a causative relation to disease is an object of par- 
amount regard. The following paragraphs will briefly 
treat of the diseases associated with micro-organisms 
and the common modes of infection in each, the chain of 
events subsequent to an infection, and the possibilities 
of protection or cure by means of substances elaborated 
in the body of an individual or animal recently recov- 
ered from an infectious disease : 

185 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Anthrax. — A disease chiefly of cattle and sheep, oc- 
casionally of man, is caused by the Bacillus anthracis, 
discovered in 1849-50 by Pollender and Davaine. It 
enters the body through abrasions of the skin, by in- 
halation of the spores, or seeds, into the lungs, or by 
swallowing infected material. 

Leprosy. — This disease is caused by a bacillus known 
as Bacillus leprae, which was discovered by Hansen in 
1879. It is doubtful if it has been grown outside the 
body. It is supposed to enter by abrasions of the skin, 
but it is very feebly contagious, notwithstanding popu- 
lar ideas as to its supposedly highly contagious nature. 

Tuberculosis. — All forms of this disease, among which 
is ordinary consumption, are caused by a bacillus close- 
ly resembling that of leprosy. It was discovered by 
Koch in 1880-82, and named Bacillus tuberculosis. The 
ways of infection are by inhaling the dried sputum of 
consumptives, drinking infected cow's milk, or eating 
infected meat. 

Typhoid Fever. — A disease of human beings only. 
Eberth in 1880 discovered the germ causing it and called 
it Bacillus typhosus. It gains entrance to our bodies 
chiefly in the milk and water we drink, which comes 
from infected sources; a rarer method is by inhalation 
of infected air. 

Diphtheria. — A disease of human beings chiefly. It 
is caused by a bacillus which was described in 1883-84 
by Klebs and Loeffler, and is known as Bacillus diph- 
theriae, or Klebs-Loeffler bacillus. Its mode of entry 
is by inhaling infected air, or by drinking or eating in- 
fected milk or food. 

Cholera. — This disease is peculiar to human beings. 
Its native home is on the banks of the river Ganges in 
India, where Koch in 1884 was able to isolate its causa- 
tive spirillum. Man is infected by drinking contami- 
nated water or by contact. 

186 



MEDICINE 

Lockjaiv, or Tetanus. — Afflicts man, horses, and dogs. 
The Bacillus tetani is the most deadly of all known bac- 
teria. It enters the body by wounds. It was discovered 
in 1884 by Nicolaier. 

Influenza, or the Grip. — Caused by one of the smallest- 
known bacilli; discovered in 1892 by Canon and Pfeiffer. 
Infection spreads by the scattering about by air -cur- 
rents of the dried nasal and bronchial secretion of those 
suffering from the disease, and its portal of entry is by 
the nose and bronchial tubes. 

Pneumonia. — Caused by a coccus which grows in 
pairs and small chains. It enters the body by means 
of the respiratory tract. It is present in the saliva of 
twenty per cent, of healtlry persons. Proved by Fran- 
kel in 1886 to be the cause of this disease. 

Bubonic Plague. — In 1894 Kitasato and Yersin iso- 
lated a small bacillus in a large number of cases and 
proved it to be the cause. It enters the body by means 
of wounds of the skin, and through bites of fleas from in- 
fected rats, which are said to be one of the chief factors 
in spreading this dread malady. 

Yellow Fever. — The cause of this disease is still under 
discussion. 

Such are a few of the infectious diseases which we can 
readily attribute to the presence of definite micro-organ- 
isms in respective cases. But strange as it may seem, 
the most typical of all infectious diseases, small-pox 
scarlet fever, measles, and hydrophobia, have as yet not 
yielded up their secrets. This is possibly due to the mi- 
nute size of the micro-organisms concerned, which make 
it beyond the power of the best microscope to demon- 
strate them. In this connection it has recently been 
shown by Roux and Nocard that in the case of the dis- 
ease known as pleuro-pneumonia of cattle the causative 
agent is so very small as just to be barely visible. Again, 
it is quite possible that these diseases may be caused by 

187 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

living things we know nothing about, which may be 
quite dissimilar from the bacteria. 

INFECTION— ITS PROCESSES AND RESULTS 

In the foregoing list of diseases associated with specific 
bacteria, attention has been drawn to the common modes 
of infection, or, as they are technically called, "portals 
of entry," and it now remains to touch upon the main 
factors, processes, and results following upon the entry 
into the body of such disease-producing microbes. 

It is a well-known fact that the normal blood has of 
itself to a considerable extent the power of killing germs 
which may wander into it through various channels. 
Likewise the tissue cells of the body in general show 
similar action depending upon the different cell groups, 
state of health, general robustness, and period of life. 
The germ-killing power varies in different individuals, 
though each may be quite healthy. Considered as a 
whole, this power possessed by the body against germs 
is known as "general resistance." And when by any 
means this power of resistance is lost or diminished, we 
run grave risks of incurring disease. 

Granted a case of infection, let us now trace up briefly 
what occurs. Between the period when the bacteria 
gain a lodgment and that in which the disease assumes 
a noticeable form, the patient simply feels out of sorts. 
It is during this stage that the blood and tissues are 
deeply engaged in the attempt to repel the attacks of the 
invading microbes. 

With varying speed the germs multiply throughout 
the body generally, or may be at first localized, or even, 
as in lockjaw, remain localized throughout the entire 
disease. Multiplying in the tissues, they generate in in- 
creasing amounts their noxious poisons, which soon 
cause profound changes throughout the body; the pa- 

188 



MEDICINE 

tient becomes decidedly ill, and shows now the signs of 
an unmistakable infection. 

Does the body now give up the fight entirely ? No ; on 
the contrary, the white blood-cells, the wandering cells, 
and the cells of the tissues most affected still carry on an 
unequal fight. From the lymphatic glands and spleen, 
armies of white cells rush to the fray and attempt to eat 
up and destroy the foe, but possibly in vain ; the disease 
runs its course, to end either in death or recovery. 

How, then, in cases of recovery, are the microbes final- 
ly overcome ? 

This question involves many complex processes which 
at present are by no means thoroughly understood, but 
we will concern ourselves with the simple principles. 

It has been previously mentioned that once the bac- 
teria get a good foothold the body is subjected to the 
action of generated poisons, which are known as toxins. 
They give rise to such symptoms as loss of appetite, 
headache, fever, pains and aches, and even a state of 
stupor or unconsciousness. In addition to the active 
warfare of the white blood-cells, groups of cells through- 
out the body, after recovering from the first rude shock 
of the toxins, begin to tolerate their presence, then effect 
a change in the chemical constitution of the toxins, and 
finally elaborate substances which antagonize the tox- 
ins and destroy their action altogether, thus lending aid 
to the warrior cells, which at last overcome the invading 
microbes. Recovery is brought about, and a more or 
less permanent degree of immunity against the special 
form of disease ensues. 

Now if we could use these antagonizing substances, 
or, as they are called, antitoxins, upon other men or 
animals sick with a similar disease, would their bodies 
be at once strengthened to resist and finally overcome 
the disease? Yes, in a certain majority of cases they 
would, and this is exactly what scientific observers have 

189 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

noted, worked out, and have successfully applied. A 
new art in the healing of disease, which is spoken of 
broadly as serum-therapy, or medication by curative or 
protective serums, has thus been discovered. 

The first observers in this new field were Pasteur and 
Raynaud in France in 1 877—78, and Salmon and Smith 
in this country in 1886. Raynaud, by injecting serum 
from a calf which had had an attack of cow-pox, pre- 
vented the appearance of the disease in a calf freshly 
inoculated with the virulent material of the disease. 
Pasteur, by using feebly infective germs of fowl chol- 
era, conferred immunity upon healthy fowls against 
the disease, and was able to cure those which were ill. 
Salmon and Smith injected small and repeated amounts 
of the elaborated toxins or poisons of the bacillus of 
hog cholera into healthy swine, and were able to confer 
immunity upon them. 

However, it was not until Behring in 1892 announced 
his discovery of an antitoxin serum for diphtheria, 
along with an undisputed proof of its value in treatment, 
that the attention of the scientific world was finally 
aroused and stimulated to the appreciation of the great 
possibilities of serum-therapy. 

Strange as it may seem, much opposition arose to 
this new method of treatment, not alone from the lay 
portions of the community, but even from the ranks 
of the medical profession itself. This opposition was 
due in part to misconceptions of the principles involved 
in the new doctrine, and in part to the falsely philan- 
thropic prejudices of the pseudo- scientific sections of 
both parties. But by the persevering work of the en- 
thusiastic believers in serum-therap}^ positive convic- 
tion has now replaced misconception and prejudice in 
the minds of the majority of its former opponents. 

The accumulation of statistical evidence, even where 
all allowance is made for doubtful methods of compila- 

190 



MEDICINE 

tion, shows that the aggregate mortality of diphthe- 
ria has been reduced fully fifty per cent, since the intro- 
duction of antitoxic treatment by Behring in 1892. 

Since the method of preparation of the commercial 
diphtheria antitoxin illustrates the general principles 
involved in the search for the production of curative 
or protective serums for infectious diseases in general, 
a summary of the steps in its manufacture will now be 
given. 

A race of diphtheria bacilli, which has been found to 
yield a poison of great virulence in alkaline beef broth, 
is grown for a week or ten days in this medium. The 
toxin is then separated and its virulence exactly deter- 
mined. It is preserved in sterile receptacles for imme- 
diate or future use. The next step is the inoculation 
of a suitable animal with the toxin. Of all animals 
the horse has been found to meet nearly every require- 
ment. Such an animal, in a state of perfect health, 
receives an injection of twenty cubic centimetres of 
toxin, along with ten or fifteen of standard antitoxin, 
beneath the skin of the neck or fore-quarters, upon three 
separate occasions at intervals of five days. After this 
it receives increasing doses of toxin, alone, at intervals 
of six to eight days, until, at the end of two months, it 
is able to stand with little discomfort doses of such 
strength that if given in the first stage these doses 
would have quickly caused death. 

At this period the horse is bled to a small extent, and 
its serum tested to ascertain if prospects are good for 
the production by the animal of a high grade of anti- 
toxin. If satisfactory progress has been made, the in- 
jections are continued for another month, when, as a 
rule, the maximal degree of antitoxic power in the se- 
rum will have been attained. 

The horse is now bled to the proper extent, the blood 
being received in a sterile jar and placed in an ice-box. 

191 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Here it coagulates, and the serum separates from it. 
When the separation of clot and serum is complete, the 
latter is drawn off, taken to the laboratory, and stand- 
ardized. This being finished, an antiseptic fluid is 
added to preserve the serum from decomposition. It is 
then bottled, labelled, and sent out for use. 

In similar fashion tetanus antitoxin is prepared ; and 
quite recently Calmette has produced an antitoxic se- 
rum for use in snake bite, by injecting horses with mi- 
nute increasing doses of snake venom. His experi- 
ments have given some remarkable results, not only 
in laboratory work, but also in cases of actual snake 
bite occurring in man. Thus bacteriological scientists, 
after years of laborious work, in the face of much criti- 
cism and severe denunciation, may confidently an- 
nounce that they have in their possession a magic key 
to one of nature's secret doors. The lock has been 
turned. The door stands partly open, and we are per- 
mitted a glimpse of the future possibilities to be attained 
in the great fight against disease. 

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE 

The following are some of the diseases which have 
been remarkably controlled through preventive medi- 
cine: 

Small-pox. — While not a scourge of the first rank, 
like the plague or cholera, at the outset of the century 
variola was one of the most prevalent and dreaded of 
all diseases. Few reached adult life without an attack. 
To-day, though outbreaks still occur, it is a disease 
thoroughly controlled by vaccination. The protective 
power of the inoculated cow-pox is not a fixed and con- 
stant quantity. The protection may be for life, or it 
may last only for a year or two. The all-important 
fact is this: That efficiently vaccinated persons may 

192 



MEDICINE 

be exposed with impunity, and among large bodies of 
men (e. g., the German army), in which revaccination 
is practised, small-pox is unknown. Of one hundred 
vaccinated persons exposed to small-pox, possibly one 
might take the disease in a mild form; of one hundred 
unvaccinated persons so exposed, one alone might es- 
cape — from twenty-five to thirty would die. To be 
efficient, vaccination must be carried out systematically, 
and if all the inhabitants of this country were revacci- 
nated at intervals small-pox would disappear (as it has 
from the German army), and the necessity for vaccina- 
tion would cease. The difficulty arises from the con- 
stant presence of an unvaccinated remnant, by which 
the disease is kept alive. The Montreal experience in 
1885 is an object-lesson never to be forgotten. 

For eight or ten years vaccination had been neglected, 
particularly among the French-Canadians. On Feb- 
ruary 28, 1885, a Pullman car conductor, who came 
from Chicago, where the disease had been slightly prev- 
alent, was admitted into the Hotel Dieu. Isolation 
was not carried out, and on the 1st of April a servant 
in the hospital died of small-pox. Following her death 
the authorities of the hospital sent to their homes all 
patients who presented no symptoms of the disease. 
Like fire in dry grass the contagion spread, and within 
nine months there died of small-pox three thousand one 
hundred and sixty -four persons. It ruined the trade 
of the city for the winter, and cost millions of dollars. 
There are no reasonable objections to vaccination, which 
is a simple process, by which a mild and harmless dis- 
ease is introduced. The use of the animal vaccine does 
away with the possibility of introduction of other dis- 
orders, such as syphilis. 

Typhus Fever. — Until the middle of the present cen- 
tury this disease prevailed widely in most of the large 
cities, particularly in Europe, and also in jails, ships, 
N 193 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

hospitals, and camps. It was more widely spread than 
typhoid fever and much more fatal. Murchison re- 
marks of it that a complete history of its ravages would 
be the history of Europe during the past three centuries 
and a half. Not one of the acute infections seems to 
have been more dependent upon filth and unsanitary 
conditions. With the gradual introduction of drainage 
and a good water supply, and the relief of overcrowding, 
the disease has almost entirely disappeared, and is rarely 
mentioned now in the bills of mortality, except in a few 
of the larger and more unsanitary cities. The following 
figures illustrate what has been done in England within 
sixty years: In 1838 in England twelve hundred and 
twenty-eight persons died of fever (typhus and typhoid) 
per million of living. Twenty years later the figures 
were reduced to nine hundred and eighteen; in 1878 to 
three hundred and six of typhoid and to thirty-six of 
typhus fever. In 1892 only one hundred and thirty- 
seven died of typhoid fever and only three of typhus per 
million living ! 

Typhoid Fever. — While preventive medicine can claim 
a great victory in this disease also, it is less brilliant, 
since the conditions which favor its prevalence are not 
those specially relating to overcrowding as much as to 
imperfect water supply and the contamination of certain 
essential foods, as milk. It has been repeatedly demon- 
strated that, with a pure water supply and perfect drain- 
age, typhoid fever almost disappears from a city. In 
Vienna, after the introduction of good water, the rate of 
mortality from typhoid fever fell from twelve per ten 
thousand of the inhabitants to about one. In Munich 
the fall was still more remarkable ; from above twenty- 
nine per ten thousand inhabitants in 1857 it fell to about 
one per ten thousand in 1887. That typhoid fever 
in this country is still a very prevalent disease de- 
pends mainly upon two facts: First, not only is the 

194 



. MEDICINE 

typhoid bacillus very resistant, but it may remain for 
a long time in the body of a person after recovery from 
typhoid fever, and such persons, in apparent good health, 
may be a source of contamination. With many of the 
conditions favoring the persistence and growth of the 
bacillus outside the body we are not yet familiar. The 
experience in the Spanish-American War illustrates 
how dangerous is the concentration together of large 
numbers of individuals. But, second, the essential 
factor in the widespread prevalence of typhoid fever in 
the United States, particularly in country districts, is 
the absence of anj^thing like efficient rural sanitation. 
Many counties have yet to learn the alphabet of sani- 
tation. The chief danger results from the impure water 
supplies of the smaller towns, the local house epidemics 
due to infected wells, and the milk outbreaks due to the 
infection of dairy farms. 

The importance of scrupulously guarding the sources of 
supply was never better illustrated than in the well-known 
and oft -quoted epidemic in Plymouth, Pennsylvania. 
The town, with a population of eight thousand, was in 
part supplied with drinking-water from a reservoir fed by 
a mountain - stream. During January, February, and 
March, in a cottage by the side of and at a distance of 
from sixty to eighty feet from this stream, a man was ill 
with typhoid fever. The attendants were in the habit at 
night of throwing out the evacuations on the ground tow- 
ards the stream. During these months the ground was 
frozen and covered with snow. In the latter part of March 
and early in April there was considerable rainfall and a 
thaw, in which a large part of the three months' accumu- 
lation of discharges was washed into the brook not sixty 
feet distant. At the very time of this thaw the patient 
had numerous and copious discharges. About the ioth 
of April cases of typhoid fever broke out in the town, ap- 
pearing for a time at the rate of fifty a day. In all about 

195 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

twelve hundred were attacked. An immense majority of 
the cases were in the part of the town which received 
water from the infected reservoir. 

The use of boiled water and of ice made from distilled 
water, the systematic inspection of dairies, the scrupu- 
lous supervision of the sources from which the water is 
obtained, an efficient system of sewage removal, and, 
above all, the most scrupulous care on the part of phy- 
sicians and of nurses in the disinfection of the discharges 
of typhoid fever patients — these are the factors necessary 
to reduce to a minimum the incidence of typhoid fever. 

Cholera. — One of the great scourges of the present 
century made inroads into Europe and America from 
India, its native home. We have, however, found out 
the germ, found out the conditions under which it lives, 
and it is not likely that it will ever again gain a foothold 
in this country or Great Britain. Since the last epidemic, 
1873, the disease, though brought to this country on sev- 
eral occasions, has always been held in check at the port 
of entry. It is communicated almost entirely through 
infected water, and the virulence of an epidemic in any 
city is in direct proportion to the imperfection of the water 
supply. This was shown in a remarkable way in the 
Hamburg epidemic of 1892. In Altona, which had a 
filtration plant, there were only five hundred and sixteen 
cases, many of them refugees from Hamburg. Ham- 
burg, where the unfiltered water of the Elbe was used, 
had some eighteen thousand cases, with nearfy eight 
thousand deaths. 

Yellow Fever. — The cause of this disease is still under 
discussion. It has an interest to us in this country 
from its continued prevalence in Cuba, and from the 
fact that at intervals it makes inroads into the Southern 
States, causing serious commercial loss. The history 
of the disease in the other West India islands, particu- 
larly Jamaica, indicates the steps which must be taken 

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MEDICINE 

for its prevention. Formerly yellow fever was as fatal 
a scourge in them as it is to-day in Cuba. By an ef- 
ficient system of sanitation it has been abolished. The 
same can be done (and will be done) in Cuba within a 
few years. General Wood has already pointed out the 
way in the cleansing of Santiago. 

The Plague. — One of the most remarkable facts in 
connection with modern epidemics has been the revival 
of the bubonic plague, the most dreaded of all the great 
infections. During the present century the disease in 
Europe has been confined almost exclusively to Turkey 
and Southern Europe. Since 1894, when it appeared 
at Hong-Kong, it has gradually spread, and there have 
been outbreaks of terrible severity in India. It has ex- 
tended to certain of the Mediterranean ports, and during 
the past summer it reached Glasgow, where there has 
been a small outbreak. On this hemisphere there have 
been small outbreaks in certain of the South American 
ports, cases have been brought to New York, and there 
have been to November 1st twenty-one cases among the 
Chinese in San Francisco. Judging from the readiness 
with which it has been checked and limited in Australia, 
and in particular the facility with which the recent out- 
break in Glasgow has been stamped out, there is very 
little risk that plague will ever assume the proportions 
which gave to it its terrible reputation as the "black 
death" of the Middle Ages. As I have already men- 
tioned, the germ is known, and prophylactic inocula- 
tions have been made on a large scale in India, with a 
certain measure of success. 

Tuberculosis. — In all communities the white plague, 
as Oliver Wendell Holmes calls it, takes the first rank 
as a killing disease. It has been estimated that of it 
one hundred and twenty thousand people die yearly in 
this country. In all mortality bills tuberculosis of the 
lungs, or consumption, heads the list, and when to this 

197 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

is added tuberculosis of the other organs, the number 
swells to such an extent that this disease equals in 
fatality all the other acute infective diseases combined, 
if we leave out pneumonia. Less than twenty years ago 
we knew little or nothing of the cause of the disease. 
It was believed to be largely hereditary. Koch dis- 
covered the germ, and with this have come the possi- 
bilities of limiting its ravages. 

The following points with reference to it may be stated : 
In a few very rare instances the disease is transmitted 
from parent to child. In a large proportion of all cases 
the disease is "caught." The germs are widely dis- 
tributed through the sputum, which, when dry, becomes 
dust, and is blown about in all directions. Tubercle 
bacilli have been found in the dust of streets, houses, 
hospital wards, and much-frequented places. A single 
individual may discharge from the lungs countless 
myriads of germs in the twenty-four hours. Dr. Nuttall 
estimated from a patient in the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 
who had only moderately advanced consumption, that 
from one and a half to four and a third billions of germs 
were thrown off in the twenty-four hours. The con- 
sumptive, as has been well stated, is almost harmless, 
and only becomes harmful through bad habits. The 
germs are contained in the sputum, which, when dry, 
is widely scattered in the form of dust, and constitutes 
the great medium for the transmission of the disease. 
If expectorated into a handkerchief, the sputum dries 
quickly, particularly if it is put into the pocket or under 
the pillow. The beard or mustache of a consumptive is 
smeared with the germs. Even in the most careful the 
hands are apt to be soiled with the germs, and in those 
who are dirty and careless the furniture and materials 
which they handle readily become infected. Where 
the dirty habit prevails of spitting on the floor, a 
room, or the entire house, may contain numbers of 

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MEDICINE 

germs. In the majority of all cases the infection in tu- 
berculosis is by inhalation. This is shown by the fre- 
quency with which the disease is met in the lungs, 
and the great prevalence of tuberculosis in institutions 
in which the residents are restricted in the matter of 
fresh air and a free, open life. The disease prevails 
specially in cloisters, in jails, and in asylums. Infection 
through milk is also possible; it is doubtful whether 
the disease is transmitted through meat. So widespread 
are the germs that post-mortem examination has shown 
that a very large number of persons show slight signs 
of the disease who have never during lif e presented any 
symptoms ; in fact, some recent investigations would 
indicate that a very large proportion of all persons at 
the age of forty have somewhere in their bodies slight 
tuberculous lesions. This shows the importance of the 
individual predisposition, upon which the older writers 
laid so much stress, and the importance of maintaining 
the nutrition at its maximum. 

One of the most remarkable features of modern pro- 
tective medicine is the widespread interest that has been 
aroused in the crusade against tuberculosis. What has 
already been accomplished warrants the belief that the 
hopes of even the most enthusiastic may be realized. A 
positive decline in the prevalence of the disease has been 
shown in many of the "larger cities during the past ten 
years. In Massachusetts, which has been a hot-bed of 
tuberculosis for many years, the death-rate has fallen 
from forty-two per ten thousand inhabitants in 1853 to 
twenty -one and eight -tenths per ten thousand inhab- 
itants in 1895. In the city of Glasgow, in which the 
records have been very carefully kept, there has been an 
extraordinary fall in the death-rate from tuberculosis, 
and the recent statistics of New York City show, too, a 
similar remarkable diminution. 

In fighting the disease our chief weapons are: First, 

199 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

education of the public, particularly of the poorer classes, 
who do not fully appreciate the chief danger in the dis- 
ease. Secondly, the compulsory notification and reg- 
istration of all cases of tuberculosis. The importance 
of this relates chiefly to the very poor and improvident, 
from whom, after all, comes the greatest danger, and 
who should be under constant surveillance in order that 
these dangers may be reduced to a minimum. Thirdly, 
the foundation in suitable localities by the city and by 
the State of sanatoria for the treatment of early cases 
of the disease. Fourthly, provision for the chronic, in- 
curable cases in special hospitals. 

Diphtheria. — Since the discovery of the germ of this 
disease and our knowledge of the conditions of its trans- 
mission, and the discovery of the antitoxin, there has 
been a great reduction in its prevalence and an equally 
remarkable reduction in the mortality. The more care- 
ful isolation of the sick, the thorough disinfection of the 
clothing, the rigid scrutiny of the milder cases of throat 
disorder, a more stringent surveillance in the period of 
convalescence, and the routine examination of the 
throats of school-children — these are the essential meas- 
ures by which the prevalence of the disease has been 
very markedly diminished. The great danger is in the 
mild cases, in which the disease has perhaps not been 
suspected, and in which the child may be walking about 
and even going to school. Such patients are often a 
source of widespread infection. The careful attention 
given by mothers to the teeth and mouth of children is 
also an important factor. In children with recurring 
attacks of tonsillitis, in whom the tonsils are enlarged, 
the organs should be removed. Through these meas- 
ures the incidence of the disease has been very greatly 
reduced. 

Pneumonia. — While there has been a remarkable dim- 
inution in the prevalence of a large number of all the 

200 



MEDICINE 

acute infections, one disease not only holds its own, but 
seems even to have increased in its virulence. In the 
mortality bills, pneumonia is an easy second to tuber- 
culosis. It attacks particularly the intemperate, the 
feeble, and the old, though every year a large number 
of robust, healthy individuals succumb. So frequent 
is pneumonia at advanced periods of life that to die of it 
has been said to be the natural end of old men in this coun- 
try. In many ways, too, it is a satisfactory disease, if 
one may use such an expression. It is not associated 
with much pain, except at the onset, the battle is brief 
and short, and a great many old persons succumb to it 
easily and peacefully. 

We know the cause of the disease ; we know only too 
well its symptoms, but the enormous fatality (from 
twenty to twenty-five per cent.) speaks only too plainly 
of the futility of our means of cure, and yet in no disease 
has there been so great a revolution in treatment. The 
patient is no longer drenched to death with drugs, or 
bled to a point where the resisting powers of nature are 
exhausted. We are not without hope, too, that in the 
future an antidote may be found to the toxins of the dis- 
ease, and of late there have been introduced several 
measures of great value in supporting the weakness of 
the heart, a special danger in the old and debilitated. 

Hydrophobia. — Rabies, a remarkable, and in certain 
countries a widespread, disease of animals, when trans- 
mitted to a man by the bite of rabid dogs, wolves, 
etc., is known as hydrophobia. The specific germ is 
unknown, but by a series of brilliant observations Pasteur 
showed (i) that the poison has certain fixed and peculiar 
properties in connection with the nervous system; (2) 
that susceptible animals could be rendered refractory 
to the disease, or incapable of taking it, by a certain 
method of inoculation ; and (3) that an animal unpro- 
tected and inoculated with a dose of the virus sufficient 

201 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

to cause the disease may, by the injection of proper anti- 
rabic treatment, escape. Supported by these facts, 
Pasteur began a system of treatment of hydrophobia in 
man, and a special institute was founded in Paris for 
the purpose. When carried out promptly the treatment 
is successful in an immense majority of all cases, and 
the mortality in persons bitten by animals proved to be 
rabid, who have subsequently had the anti-rabic treat- 
ment, has been reduced to less than one-half per cent. 
The disease may be stamped out in dogs by careful 
quarantine of suspected animals, and by a thoroughly 
carried out muzzling order. 

Malaria. — Among the most remarkable of modern dis- 
coveries is the cause of malarial fever, one of the great mal- 
adies of the world, and a prime obstacle to the settlement 
of Europeans in tropical regions. Until 1880 the cause was 
quite obscure. It was known that the disease prevailed 
chiefly in marshy districts, in the autumn, and that the 
danger of infection was greatest in the evening and at 
night, and that it was not directly contagious. In 1880 a 
French army surgeon, Laveran, discovered in the red 
blood-corpuscles small bodies which have proved to be the 
specific germ of the disease. They are not bacteria, but 
little animal bodies resembling the amoeba — tiny little 
portions of protoplasm. The parasite in its earliest form 
is a small, clear, ring-shaped body inside the red blood- 
corpuscle, upon which it feeds, gradually increasing in 
size and forming within itself blackish grains out of the 
coloring matter of the corpuscle. When the little para- 
site reaches a certain size it begins to divide or multiply, 
and an enormous number of these breaking up at the 
same time give off poison in the blood, which causes the 
paroxysms of fever. During what is known as the chill, 
in the intermittent fever, for example, one can always 
find these dividing parasites. Several different forms 
of the parasites have been found, corresponding to dif- 

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MEDICINE 

ferent varieties of malaria. Parasites of a very similar 
nature exist abundantly in birds. Ross, an army sur- 
geon in India, found that the spread of this parasite 
from bird to bird was effected through the intervention 
of the mosquito. The parasites reach maturity in cer- 
tain cells of the coats of the stomach of these insects, 
and develop into peculiar thread-like bodies, many of 
which ultimately reach the salivary glands, from which, 
as the insect bites, they pass with the secretion of the 
glands into the wound. From this as a basis, numerous 
observers have worked out the relation of the mosquito 
to malaria in the human subject. 

Briefly stated, the disease is transmitted chiefly by 
certain varieties of the mosquito, particularly the Ano- 
pheles. The ordinary Culex, which is present chiefly in 
the Northern States, does not convey the disease. The 
Anopheles sucks the blood from a person infected with 
malaria, takes in a certain number of parasites, which 
undergo development in the body of the insect, the final 
outcome of which is numerous small, thread-like struct- 
ures, which are found in numbers in the salivary glands. 
From this point, when the mosquito bites another in- 
dividual, they pass into his blood, infect the system, 
and in this way the disease is transmitted. Two very 
striking experiments may be mentioned. The Italian 
observers have repeatedly shown that Anopheles which 
have sucked blood from patients suffering from malaria, 
when sent to a non-malarial region, and there allowed 
to bite perfectly healthy persons, have transmitted the 
disease. But a very crucial experiment was made a 
short time ago. Mosquitoes which had bitten malarial 
patients in Italy were sent to London and there allowed 
to bite Mr. Manson, son of Dr. Manson, who really sug- 
gested the mosquito theory of malaria. This gentle- 
man had not lived out of England, and there is no acute 
malaria in London. He had been a perfectly healthy, 

203 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

strong man. In a few clays following the bites of the in- 
fected mosquitoes he had a typical attack of malarial 
fever. 

The other experiment, though of a different character, 
is quite as convincing. In certain regions about Rome, 
in the Campania, malaria is so prevalent that in the 
autumn almost every one in the district is attacked, par- 
ticularly if he is a new-comer. Dr. Sambron and a friend 
lived in this district from the 1st of June to the 1st of 
September, 1900. The test was whether they could live 
in this exceedingly dangerous climate for the three 
months without catching malaria, if they used stringent 
precautions against the bites of mosquitoes. For this 
purpose the hut in which they lived was thoroughly 
wired, and they slept with the greatest care under netting. 
Both of these gentlemen at the end of the period had es- 
caped the disease. 

The importance of these studies cannot be overesti- 
mated. The}' explain the relation of malaria tomarslry 
districts, the seasonal incidence of the disease, the noc- 
turnal infection, and man}' other hitherto obscure prob- 
lems. More important still, they point out clearly the 
way by which malaria may be prevented : First, the 
recognition that any individual with malaria is a source 
of danger in a community, so that he must be thoroughly 
treated with quinine; secondly, the importance of the 
draining of marshy districts and ponds in which mos- 
quitoes breed ; and, thirdly, that even in the most infected 
regions persons may escape the disease by living in 
thoroughly protected houses, in this way escaping the 
bites of mosquitoes. 

Venereal Diseases. — These continue to embarrass the 
social economist and to perplex and distress the profes- 
sion. The misery and ill-health which they cause are 
incalculable, and the pity of it is that the cross is not 
always borne by the offender, but innocent women and 

204 



MEDICINE 

children share the penalties. The gonorrheal infection, 
so common, and often so little heeded, is a cause of much 
disease in parts other than those first affected. Syphilis 
claims its victims in every rank of life, at every age, and 
in all countries. We now treat it more thoroughly, but 
all attempts to check its ravages have been fruitless. 
Physicians have two important duties: the incessant 
preaching of continence to young men, and scrupulous 
care, in every case, that the disease may not be a source 
of infection to others, and that by thorough treatment 
the patient may be saved from the serious late nervous 
manifestations. We can also urge that in the interests 
of public health venereal diseases, like other infections, 
shall be subject to supervision by the State. The op- 
position to measures tending to the restriction of these 
diseases is most natural : on the one hand, from women, 
who feel that it is an aggravation of a shocking injustice 
and wrong to their sex ; on the other, from those who 
feel the moral guilt in a legal recognition of the evil. It 
is appalling to contemplate the frightful train of miseries 
which a single diseased woman may entail, not alone 
on her associates, but on scores of the innocent — whose 
bitter cry should make the opponents of legislation 
feel that any measures of restriction, any measures of 
registration, would be preferable to the present disgrace- 
ful condition, which makes of some Christian cities open 
brothels and allows the purest homes to be invaded by 
the most loathsome of all diseases. 

Leprosy. — Since the discovery of the germ of this ter- 
rible disease systematic efforts have been made to im- 
prove the state of its victims and to promote the study 
of the conditions under which the disease prevails. The 
English Leprosy Commission has done good work in 
calling attention to the widespread prevalence of the 
disease in India and in the East. In this country lep- 
rosy has been introduced into San Francisco by the 

205 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Chinese, and into the Northwestern States by the Nor- 
wegians, and there are foci of the disease in the South- 
ern States, particularly Louisiana, and in the province 
of New Brunswick. The problem has an additional in- 
terest since the annexation of Hawaii and the Philippine 
Islands, in both of which places leprosy prevails exten- 
sively. By systematic measures of inspection and the 
segregation of affected individuals the disease can readily 
be held in check. It is not likely ever to increase among 
native Americans, or again gain such a foothold as it 
had in the Middle Ages. 

Puerperal Fever. — Perhaps one of the most striking 
of all victories of preventive medicine has been the al- 
most total abolition of so-called child-bed fever from the 
maternity hospitals and from private practice. In many 
institutions the mortality after child-birth was five or 
six per cent., indeed sometimes as high as ten per cent., 
whereas to-day, owing entirely to proper antiseptic 
precautions, the mortality has fallen to three-tenths to 
four-tenths per cent. The recognition of the contagious- 
ness of puerperal fever was the most valuable contribu- 
tion to medical science made by Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
There had been previous suggestions by several writers, 
but his essay on the "Contagiousness of Puerperal 
Fever," published in 1843, was the first strong, clear, 
logical statement of the case. Semmelweis, a few years 
later, added the weight of a large practical experience 
to the side of the contagiousness, but the full recogni- 
tion of the causes of the disease was not reached until the 
recent antiseptic views had been put into practical effect. 

THE NEW DISPENSATION IN TREATMENT 

The century has witnessed a revolution in the treat- 
ment of disease, and the growth of a new school of med- 
icine. The old schools — regular and homoeopathic — 

206 



MEDICINE 

put their trust in drugs, to give which was the alpha and 
the omega of their practice. For every symptom there 
were a score or more of medicines — vile, nauseous com- 
pounds in one case; bland, harmless dilutions in the 
other. The new school has a firm faith in a few good, 
well-tried drugs, little or none in the great mass of medi- 
cines still in general use. Imperative drugging — the 
ordering of medicine in any and every malady — is no 
longer regarded as the chief function of the doctor. Nat- 
urally, when the entire conception of the disease was 
changed, there came a corresponding change in our ther- 
apeutics. In no respect is this more strikingly shown 
than in our present treatment of fever — say, of the com- 
mon typhoid fever. During the first quarter of the cen- 
tury the patients were bled, blistered, purged and vom- 
ited, and dosed with mercury, antimony, and other com- 
pounds to meet special symptoms. During the second 
quarter, the same, with variations in different countries. 
After 1850 bleeding became less frequent, and the ex- 
periments of the Paris and Vienna schools began to shake 
the belief in the control of fever by drugs. During the 
last quarter sensible doctors have reached the conclu- 
sion that typhoid fever is not a disease to be treated with 
medicines, but that in a large proportion of all cases 
diet, nursing, and bathing meet the indications. There 
is active, systematic, careful, watchful treatment, but not 
with drugs. The public has not yet been fully educated 
to this point, and medicines have sometimes to be ordered 
for the sake of the friends, and it must be confessed that 
there are still in the ranks antiques who would insist on 
a dose of some kind every few hours. 

The battle against poly-pharmacy, or the use of a 
large number of drugs (of the action of which we know 
little, yet we put them into bodies of the action of which 
we know less), has not been fought to a finish. There 
have been two contributing factors on the side of prog- 

207 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ress — the remarkable growth of the skeptical spirit 
fostered by Paris, Vienna, and Boston physicians, and, 
above all, the valuable lesson of homoeopathy, the in- 
finitesimals of which certainly could not do harm, and 
quite as certainly could not do good; yet nobody has 
ever claimed that the mortality among homoeopathic prac- 
titioners was greater than among those of the regular 
school. A new school of practitioners has arisen which 
cares nothing for homoeopathy and less for so-called 
allopathy. It seeks to study, rationally and scientifi- 
cally, the action of drugs, old and new. It is more con- 
cerned that a physician shall know how to apply the few 
great medicines which all have to use, such as quinine, 
iron, mercury, iodide of potassium, opium, and digitalis, 
rather than a multiplicity of remedies the action of which 
is extremely doubtful. 

The growth of scientific pharmacology, by which we 
now have many active principles instead of crude drugs, 
and the discovery of the art of making medicines palata- 
ble, have been of enormous aid in rational practice. There 
is no limit to the possibility of help from the scientific 
investigation of the properties and action of drugs. At 
any day the new chemistry may give to us remedies of 
extraordinary potency and of as much usefulness as 
cocaine. There is no reason why we should not even 
in the vegetable world find for certain diseases specifics 
of virtue fully equal to that of quinine in the malarial 
fevers. 

One of the most striking characteristics of the mod- 
ern treatment of disease is the return to what used to be 
called the natural methods — diet, exercise, bathing, and 
massage. There probably never has been a period in 
the history of the profession when the value of diet in 
the prevention and the cure of disease was more fully 
recognized. Dyspepsia, the besetting malady of this 
country, is largely due to improper diet, imperfectly pre- 

208 



MEDICINE 

pared and too hastily eaten. One of the great lessons to 
be learned is that the preservation of health depends in 
great part upon food well cooked and carefully eaten. 
A common cause of ruined digestion, particularly in 
young girls, is the eating of sweets between meals and 
the drinking of the abominations dispensed in the chem- 
ists' shops in the form of ice-cream sodas, etc. Another 
frequent cause of ruined digestion in business men is 
the hurried meal at the lunch -counter. And a third 
factor, most important of all, illustrates the old maxim, 
that more people are killed by over eating and drinking 
than by the sword. Sensible people have begun to realize 
that alcoholic excesses lead inevitably to impaired health. 
A man may take four or five drinks of whiskey a day, or 
even more, and thinks perhaps that he transacts his 
business better with that amount of stimulant; but it 
only too frequently happens that early in the fifth decade, 
just as business or political success is assured, Bacchus 
hands in heavy bills for payment, in the form of serious 
disease of the arteries or of the liver, or there is a general 
breakdown. With the introduction of light beer there 
has been not only less intemperance, but a reduction in 
the number of the cases of organic disease of the heart, 
liver, and stomach caused by alcohol. While temper- 
ance in the matter of alcoholic drinks is becoming a 
characteristic feature of Americans, intemperance in the 
quantity of food taken is almost the rule. Adults eat 
far too much, and physicians are beginning to recog- 
nize that the early degenerations, particularly of the 
arteries and of the kidneys, leading to Bright 's disease, 
which were formerly attributed to alcohol, are due in 
large part to too much food. 

Nursing. — Perhaps in no particular does nineteenth- 
century practice differ from that of the preceding cen- 
turies more than in the greater attention which is given 
to the personal comfort of the patient and to all the ac- 
O 209 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

cessories comprised in the art of nursing. The phy- 
sician has in the trained nurse an assistant who carries 
out his directions with a watchful care, and who is on 
the lookout for danger-signals, and with accurate notes 
enables him to estimate the progress of a critical case 
from hour to hour. The intelligent, devoted women 
who have adopted the profession of nursing, are not 
only in their ministrations a public benefaction, but they 
have lightened the anxieties which form so large a part 
of the load of the busy doctor. 

Massage and Hydrotherapy have taken their places as 
most important measures of relief in many chronic con- 
ditions, and the latter has been almost universally adopt- 
ed as the only safe means of combating the high tem- 
peratures of the acute fevers. 

Within the past quarter of a century the value of ex- 
ercise in the education of the young has become recog- 
nized. The increase in the means of taking wholesome 
out-of-door exercise is remarkable, and should show in 
a few years an influence in the reduction of the nervous 
troubles in young persons. The prophylactic benefit of 
systematic exercise, taken in moderation b}^ persons of 
middle age, is very great. Golf and the bicycle have in 
the past few years materially lowered the average in- 
comes of the doctors in this country as derived from per- 
sons under forty. From the senile contingent — those 
above this age — the average income has for a time been 
raised by these exercises, as a large number of persons 
have been injured by taking up sports which may be 
vigorously pursued with safety only by those with young 
arteries. 

Of three departures in the art of healing, brief mention 
may be made. The use of the extracts of certain organs 
(or of the organs themselves) in disease is as old as the 
days of the Romans, but an extraordinary impetus has 
been given to the subject by the discovery of the curative 

210 



MEDICINE 

powers of the extract of the thyroid gland in the diseases 
known as cretinism and myxcedema. The brilliancy 
of the results in these diseases has had no parallel in the 
history of modern medicine, but it cannot be said that in 
the use of the extracts of other organs for disease the re- 
sults have fulfilled the sanguine expectations of many. 
There was not, in the first place, the same physiological 
basis, and practitioners have used these extracts too in- 
discriminately and without sufficient knowledge of the 
subject. 

Secondly, as I have already mentioned, we possess 
a sure and certain hope that for many of the acute in- 
fections antitoxins will be found. 

A third noteworthy feature in modern treatment has 
been a return to psychical methods of cure, in which 
faith in something is suggested to the patient. After all, 
faith is the great lever of life. Without it, man can do 
nothing; with it, even with a fragment, as a grain of 
mustard - seed, all things are possible to him. Faith in 
us, faith in our drugs and methods, is the great stock in 
trade of the profession. In one pan of the balance, put 
the pharmacopoeias of the world, all the editions from 
Dioscorides to the last issue of the United States Dis- 
pensatory; heap them on the scales as did Euripides 
his books in the celebrated contest in the "Frogs"; in 
the other put the simple faith with which from the 
days of the Pharaohs until now the children of men have 
swallowed the mixtures these works describe, and the 
bulky tomes will kick the beam. It is the aurum potabile, 
the touchstone of success in medicine. As Galen says, 
confidence and hope do more good than physic — " he 
cures most in whom most are confident." That strange 
compound of charlatan and philosopher, Paracelsus, 
encouraged his patients " to have a good faith, a strong 
imagination, and they shall find the effects" (Burton). 
While we often overlook or are ignorant of our own f aith- 

211 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

cures, doctors are just a wee bit too sensitive about those 
performed outside our ranks. They have never had, 
and cannot expect to have, a monopoly in this panacea, 
which is open to all, free as the sun, and which may make 
of every one in certain cases, as was the Lacedemon of 
Homer's day, "a good physician out of Nature's grace." 
Faith in the gods or in the saints cures one, faith in little 
pills another, hypnotic suggestion a third, faith in a 
plain, common doctor a fourth. In all ages the prayer of 
faith has healed the sick, and the mental attitude of the 
suppliant seems to be of more consequence than the 
powers to which the prayer is addressed. The cures in 
the temples of iEsculapius, the miracles of the saints, the 
remarkable cures of those noble men, the Jesuit mission- 
aries, in this country, the modern miracles at Lourdes 
and at St. Anne de Beaupr6 in Quebec, and the wonder- 
workings of the so-called Christian Scientists, are often 
genuine, and must be considered in discussing the foun- 
dations of therapeutics. We physicians use the same 
power every day. If a poor lass, paralyzed, apparently, 
helpless, bed-ridden for years, comes to me, having worn 
out in mind, bod}?, and estate a devoted family; if she in a 
few weeks or less by faith in me, and faith alone, takes 
up her bed and walks, the saints of old could not have 
done more. St. Anne and man3^ others can scarcely to- 
day do less. We enjoy, I say, no monopoly in the faith 
business. The faith with which we work, the faith, in- 
deed, which is available to-day in every-day life, has its 
limitations. It will not raise the dead ; it will not put in 
a new eye in place of a bad one (as it did to an Iroquois 
Indian boy for one of the Jesuit fathers), nor will it cure 
cancer or pneumonia, or knit a bone ; but, in spite of these 
nineteenth-century restrictions, such as we find it, faith 
is a most precious commodit} 7 , without which we should 
be very badly off. 

Hypnotism, introduced by Mesmer in the eighteenth 

212 



MEDICINE 

century, has had several revivals as a method of treatment 
during the nineteenth century. The first careful study of 
it was made by Braid, a Manchester surgeon, who intro- 
duced the terms hypnotism, hypnotic, and nervous sleep ; 
but at this time no very great measure of success followed 
its use in practice, except perhaps in the case of an An- 
glo-Indian surgeon, James Esdaile, who, prior to the in- 
troduction of anaesthesia, had performed two hundred 
and sixty-one surgical operations upon patients in a state 
of hypnotic unconsciousness. About 1 880 the French 
physicians, particularly Charcot and Bernheim, took 
up the study, and since that time hypnotism has been 
extensively practised. It may be defined as a subjective 
psychical condition, what Braid called nervous sleep, re- 
sembling .somnambulism, in which, as Shakespeare says, 
in the description of Lady Macbeth, the person receives at 
once the benefit of sleep and does the effects or acts of 
watching or waking. Therapeutically, the important fact 
is that the individual 's natural susceptibility to suggestion 
is increased, and this may hold after the condition of hyp- 
nosis has pas.sed away. The condition of hypnosis is 
usually itself induced by suggestion, requesting the 
subject to close the eyes, to think of sleep, and the oper- 
ator then repeats two or three times sentences suggesting 
sleep, and suggesting that the limbs are getting heavy 
and that he is feeling drowsy. During this state it has 
been found that the subjects are very susceptible to sug- 
gestion. Too much must not be expected of hypnotism, 
and the claims which have been made for it have been 
too often grossly exaggerated. It seems, as it has been 
recently well put, that hypnotism "at best permits of 
making suggestions more effective for good or bad than 
can be done upon one in his waking state." It is found 
to be of very little use in organic disease. It has been 
helpful in some cases of hysteria, in certain functional 
spasmodic affections of the nervous system, in the vicious 

213 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

habits of childhood, and in suggesting to the victims of 
alcohol and drugs that they should get rid of their inor- 
dinate desires. It has been used successfully in certain 
cases for the relief of labor pains, and in surgical opera- 
tions ; but on the whole, while a valuable agent in a few 
cases, it has scarcely fulfilled the expectations of its ad- 
vocates. It is a practice not without serious dangers, 
and should never be performed except in the presence of 
a third person, and its indiscriminate practice by igno- 
rant persons should be prevented by law. 

One mode of faith-healing in modern days, which passes 
under the remarkable name of Christian Science, is prob- 
ably nothing more than mental suggestion under another 
name. " The patient is told to be calm, and is assured 
that all will go well ; that he must try to aid the healer 
by believing that what is told him is true. The healer 
then, quietly but firmly, asserts and reiterates that 
there is no pain, no suffering, that it is disappearing, 
that relief will come, that the patient is getting well." 
This is precisely the method which Bernheim used to 
use with such success in his hypnotic patients at Nancy, 
iterating and reiterating, in a most wearisome way, that 
the disease would disappear and the patient would feel 
better. As has been pointed out by a recent writer (Dr. 
Harry Marshall), the chief basis for the growth of Chris- 
tian Science is that which underlies every popular fal- 
lacy : " Oliver Wendell Holmes outlined very clearly the 
factors concerned, showing (a) how easily abundant 
facts can be collected to prove anything whatsoever; 
(b) how insufficient 'exalted wisdom, immaculate hon- 
esty, and vast general acquirements ' are to prevent an 
individual from having the most primitive ideas upon 
subjects out of his line of thought ; and, finally, demon- 
strating 'the boundless credulity and excitability of 
mankind upon subjects connected with medicine." 

William Osler. 



SURGERY 



SURGERY 



'"THE end of the eighteenth century was made notable 
* by one of the most remarkable and beneficent 
discoveries which has ever blessed the human race, 
the discovery of the means of preventing small -pox. 
On May 14, 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner inoculated James 
Phipps. When we remember that two million persons 
died in a single year in the Russian Empire from 
small -pox ; that in 1707 in Iceland, out of a popu- 
lation of thirty thousand, sixty per cent., or eighteen 
thousand, died ; that in Jenner 's time " an adult person 
who had not had small-pox was scarcely met with or heard 
of in the United Kingdom, and that owing to his discov- 
ery small- pox is now one of the rarest diseases," the strong 
words I have used seem fully justified. But the eigh- 
teenth century was not to witness the end of progress 
in medicine. The advances in the nineteenth century 
have been even more startling and more beneficent. 
What these advances have been in the department of 
medicine has been related by Professor Osier. It is my 
province to speak only of surgery. 

METHOD OF TEACHING 

The first advance which should be mentioned is a 
fundamental one — namely, methods of medical teaching. 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were 
only three medical schools in the United States : the Med- 
ical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, estab- 

217 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

lished in 1765; the Medical Department of Harvard, 
established in 1783 ; and the Medical Department of Dart- 
mouth, established in 1797. The last report of the Com- 
missioner of Education gives a list of one hundred and 
fifty-five medical schools now in existence in this country, 
many of them still poorly equipped and struggling for ex- 
istence, but a large number of them standing in the first 
rank, with excellent modern equipment, both in teachers, 
laboratories, hospitals, and other facilities. The medical 
curriculum then extended over only two years or less, 
and consisted of courses of lectures at the most by seven 
professors who, year after year, read the same course 
of lectures, without illustrations and with no practi- 
cal teaching. The medical schools, even when con- 
nected with universities, were practically private cor- 
porations, the members of which took all the fees, 
spent what money they were compelled to spend in 
the maintenance of what we now should call the sem- 
blance of an education, and divided the profits. Until 
within about twenty years this method prevailed in 
all our medical schools. But the last two decades of 
the century have seen a remarkable awakening of the 
medical profession to the need of a broader and more 
liberal education, and that, as a prerequisite, the medical 
schools should be on the same basis as the department 
of arts in every well-regulated college. To accomplish 
this the boards of trustees have taken possession of 
the fees of students, have placed the faculties upon sal- 
aries, and have used such portion of the incomes of the 
institutions as was needed for a constant and yet rapid 
development along the most liberal lines. 

COLLEGE HOSPITALS 

The first step has been the establishment in connec- 
tion with most schools of general hospitals in which the 

218 



SURGERY 

various teachers in the college should be the clinical 
instructors, and where the students would have the 
means not only of hearing theoretically what should be 
done to the sick, but of actually examining the patients 
under the supervision of their instructors, studying the 
cases so as to become skilled in reaching a diagnosis 
and indicating what in their opinion was necessary in 
the way either of hygiene, medicine, or surgical opera- 
tion. More than that, in most of the advanced schools 
to-day the students assist the clinical faculties of the 
hospitals in the actual performance of operations, so 
that when they graduate they are skilled to a degree 
utterly unknown twenty years ago. 

ESTABLISHMENT OF LABORATORIES 

Another step which was equally important, and in 
some respects even more so, has been the establishment 
of laboratories connected with each branch of instruc- 
tion. A laboratory of anatomy (the dissecting room) 
every medical school has always had, but all the other 
laboratories are recent additions. Among these may 
be named a laboratory of clinical medicine, a laboratory 
of therapeutics, in which the action of drugs is studied ; 
a laboratory of chemistry, a laboratory of microscopy, 
a laboratory of pathology for the study of diseased tis- 
sues, a laboratory of embryology for the study of the de- 
velopment of the human body and of the embryos of ani- 
mals, a laboratory of hygiene, a laboratory of bacteriol- 
ogy, a laboratory of pharmacy, a surgical laboratory, 
in which all the operations of surgery are done on the 
cadaver by each student, a laboratorj^ of plrysiology, 
and in many colleges private rooms in which advanced 
work may be done for the discovery of new truths. 

In all these laboratories, instead of simply hearing 
about the experiments and observations, each student 

219 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

is required to handle the drugs, the chemicals, the ap- 
paratus, to do all the operations, to look through the 
microscope, etc. ; in other words, to do all that which is 
necessary for the proper understanding of the case in 
hand. In fact, it may be said that in view of the op- 
portunities and the requirements of modern hospitals, it 
is undoubtedly true that a hospital patient, the poorest 
of the poor, often has his case more thoroughly studied 
and more accurately observed than the wealthy patient 
who is attended at his home. On the other hand, how- 
ever, so many laboratories with their expensive apparatus 
and a large staff of assistants mean an enormous in- 
crease in the expense of a medical education, for which 
the student does not pay an}^thing like an equivalent. 
Hence the need in all of our best modern medical schools 
for endowments, in order that such work may be carried 
on properly, and yet the student not be charged such 
fees as to be practically prohibitory, excepting for the 
rich, or at the least the well-to-do. I do not hesitate 
to say that at the end of the second j^ear many a diligent 
student of to-day is better fitted to practise medicine than 
was the graduate of half a century ago. 

ANATOMICAL MATERIAL 

One of the most important means of the study of medi- 
cine, and especially of surgery, is a thorough acquaint- 
ance with the anatomy of the human body. No one 
would think of placing an engineer in charge of a com- 
plicated piece of machinery, who had never become inti- 
mately acquainted with all the parts of such a machine, 
so that he could take it to pieces and put it together 
again with ease and intelligence. Yet, until compara- 
tively recently, this knowledge of anatomy was both 
required of, and yet at the same time the means of obtain- 
ing it was forbidden to, the medical student. If he per- 

220 



SURGERY 

formed an operation and was guilty of negligence or error, 
due to his want of anatomical knowledge, he was liable 
to a suit for malpractice. Yet his only means of be- 
coming acquainted with the anatomy of the human body 
was by stealing the bodies of the dead. In England, up to 
1832, this was equally true. A regular traffic in human 
bodies existed there as well as here, and, by reason of 
its perils, the cost of bodies for dissection was very great ; 
but it was only a question of money. In his testimony 
before the Parliamentary Committee, Sir Astley Cooper 
made a shiver run down the backs of the noble lords 
who listened to him when he said that in order to dissect 
the body of any of them it was only necessary for him 
to pay enough. The large pecuniary profits of such 
business, when the supply was very small, led to the 
horrible atrocities of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh in 
1832. They deliberately murdered a considerable num- 
ber of persons, and sold the bodies to the dissecting rooms 
in that city. The discovery of their crimes finally led 
to the passage of the Anatomy Act, which has been in 
force in Great Britain ever since. Similar violations 
of graveyards in this country have led to the passage 
in various States of somewhat similar laws, usually giv- 
ing for dissection the bodies of those who were so poor 
in friendship that no one would spend the money neces- 
sary for their burial. Even to-day, in a large number 
of our States, the former anomalous condition of affairs 
exists. The increase of anatomical material which has 
resulted from the enactment of wise and salutary laws 
for this purpose has given a great impetus to the study 
of anatomy, and has produced a far better educated 
class of physicians in most parts of the United States 
within the last few years. The enlightened sense of 
the community has perceived that to deny the medical 
schools the means of properly teaching anatomy was a 
fatal mistake, and residted in an ignorance of which 

221 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the community were the victims. As a result, it is possi- 
ble now, by law, in most States to obtain a reasonable 
number of cadavers, not only for the study of anatomy, 
but for the performance of all the usual operations. 

MEDICAL LIBRARIES 

Along with this there has been throughout this coun- 
try a marked movement in favor of medical libraries. 
It is to the credit of the government of the United States 
that the whole world is debtor to us, not only for the fore- 
most medical library in the world, that of the surgeon- 
general of the army in Washington, but also for the 
magnificent index-catalogue, not only of the books, but 
all the journal articles in every language in the world. 
No better investment of money was ever made than the 
establishment of this library, and its allied museum, 
and the publication of the index-catalogue. 

EMBRYOLOGY 

As a result of all these means and methods of study, 
and as a part of the great educational and scientific 
movement of the century, medical men now take a wholly 
different view of the normal and abnormal structures of 
the human body. The study of embryology has shown 
us that many of the deviations from the normal devel- 
opment of the human body are easily explained by em- 
bryology. One of the most important changes in our 
idea, for example, of tumors is due to the fact that the 
study of embryology and of the tissues of the embryo 
have shown us that diseased structures, which lack 
explanation entirely, when compared with the adult 
human tissues, readily find their explanation and fall 
into an unexpected order when compared with the tis- 
sues of the embryo. Not only, however, has the study 

222 



SURGERY 

of embryological tissues thrown a flood of light on dis- 
eased structures, but we have obtained new views of the 
relation of man to all creatures, lower in the scale of life. 
Largely owing to the doctrine of evolution, we now rec- 
ognize the fact that, so far as his body is concerned, man 
is kindred to the brutes; that his diseases, within cer- 
tain limitations, are identical with similar diseases of 
the lower animals; that his anatomy and physiology 
are, in essence, the same as the anatomy and physiology 
of the lower animals, even the very lowest, and that many 
of his diseases can be best studied in the lower animals, 
because upon them we can make exact experiments 
which would be impossible in man. While it is true 
that each animal has disorders which are peculiar to itself, 
and that it is not subject to some of the disorders to which 
man is a victim, and, per contra, that man is a victim to 
some disorders from which animals do not suffer, yet, 
taking them as a whole, the diseases of man and of ani- 
mals, and the action of remedies on both, are practically 
identical. To this I shall have occasion to refer again. 

PATHOLOGY 

Among the laboratories which I mentioned, one of the 
most important is that of pathology and morbid anatomy, 
or the study of diseased tissues and organs. The first 
work on pathology written in this country was by one 
of our best-known surgeons, the late Samuel D. Gross, 
and one of his most important contributions to surgical 
progress consisted in his persistent advocacy of the need 
for the study of pathology as a basis for all our means 
of cure. This is evident, if we consider the illustration 
I used a moment ago of a steam-engine. Unless he 
knows precisely the defects of such a machine, the in- 
fluence of fresh or salt water on a boiler, the influence of 
rust, the effect of oils, entirely apart from the mere mech- 

223 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

anism of the engine, an engineer might make the most 
serious mistake, resulting in fatal damage, both to the 
machine and probably to life. So, surgical pathology 
is the study of the processes of disease, the alterations 
in the minute structure of tissues and organs, without 
which no surgeon can be fitted for his task, much less 
can he be called an accomplished surgeon. All of these 
laboratories mark the difference between the scientific 
and the empirical method. The old student of medicine 
went from case to case, heard many a good maxim, 
and learned many a useful trick ; but, after all, it 
was only an empirical knowledge which he obtained. 
It did not go to the foundation of things, it was 
not scientific, as is the collegiate instruction of to- 
day. 

Having now glanced rapidly at the improvement in 
medical instruction, let me turn next to a few of the prin- 
cipal discoveries which have made the surgery of to-day 
so much superior to the surgery of a hundred years ago. 

ANAESTHESIA 

After vaccination, the most important medical event 
of the century is the discovery of anaesthesia. While 
there were some prior attempts at anaesthesia, practi- 
cally it dates from October 16, 1846, when Dr. John C. 
Warren, in the Massachusetts General Hospital, first 
performed a major surgical operation, without inflicting 
the slightest pain. I cannot enter into the merits of the 
various claimants for the credit of first using an anaes- 
thetic, but ether was then for the first time publicly ad- 
ministered by Morton, and the very sponge which was 
then used is now a precious trophy of the Massachusetts 
General Hospital. I may, perhaps, quote from an ad- 
dress which I delivered before the Medical and Chirur- 
gical Faculty of the State of Maryland, at their centennial 

224 



SURGERY 

anniversary, in April, 1899, the following in relation to 
anaesthesia : 

"The news went like wildfire, and anaesthesia was 
soon introduced into every clinic and at almost every 
operation throughout the civilized world. Prior to that 
time a surgical operation was attended with horrors 
which those who live in these days cannot appreciate. 
He was the best surgeon who could perform any opera- 
ation in the least possible time. The whole object of new 
methods of operating was to shorten the period of fright- 
ful agony which every patient had to endure. Every 
second of suffering saved was an incalculable boon. 
To submit to any operation required then a heroism and 
an endurance which is almost incomprehensible to us 
now. All of the more modern, deliberate, careful, pains- 
taking operations, involving minute dissection, amid 
nerves and blood-vessels, when life or death depends on 
the accuracy of almost every touch of the knife, were 
absolutely impossible. It was beyond human endur- 
ance quietly to submit one's self for an hour, for an 
hour and a half, for two hours, or even longer, to such 
physical agony. 

" It is a striking commentary on the immediate results of 
anaesthesia to learn that, in five years before the introduc- 
tion of ether, only one hundred and eighty-four persons 
were willing to submit themselves to such a dreadful ordeal 
in the Massachusetts General Hospital — an average of 
thirty-seven operations per annum, or three per month. 
. . . During the last year, in the same hospital — a 
Mecca for every surgeon the world over — over thirty- 
seven hundred operations were performed. It is not 
an uncommon thing at the present day for any one of 
the more active surgeons of this country to do as many 
as four or five hundred operations in a year. I have 
known as many as nineteen operations to be done in 
P 225 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the Jefferson Medical College Hospital in a single day 
— equalling six months' work in Boston before the in- 
troduction of ether." 

The next year, 1847, witnessed the introduction of 
chloroform by Sir James Y. Simpson, of Edinburgh. 
Until I became acquainted with the striking figures 
just quoted, I had often wondered at the hospital scene 
in that most touching story, Rab and His Friends, 
by the late gifted and well-beloved physician, Dr. John 
Brown, of Edinburgh. Nowadays students do not rush 
into the surgical amphitheatre when they learn that 
an operation is to be done, but it is taken as a matter of 
course, for practically every day many operations are 
done in most of our large hospitals. But, at the time 
when Rab's mistress was operated upon, an operation, 
as has been stated, was a very rare event. Few had 
the fortitude to endure its dreadful pangs. Now, thanks 
to the blessed sleep of anaesthesia, sufferers from even 
the most dreadful disorders can have long and difficult 
operations done, accurate and tedious dissections made, 
and yet feel not a twinge of pain. 

Besides general anaesthesia by ether, chloroform, and 
a few other agents, there have been introduced several 
means for producing "local anaesthesia," i. e., agents 
which destroy the sensibility of the part of the body to 
be operated upon while not producing unconsciousness. 
Freezing the part by ice and salt, or by a quickly evapo- 
rating spray of rhigolene or chloride of ethyl, are some- 
times used. But cocaine and a somewhat similar sub- 
stance, eucaine, have of late been more extensively 
used on man, after their harmlessness had been first 
shown by experiments on animals. In 1885 Corning, of 
New York, injected a solution of cocaine as near to the 
spinal cord as was possible, and produced insensibility 
of all the body below the point of injection by the effect 

226 



SURGERY 

of the cocaine upon the spinal cord. A few years ago 
Quincke, of Kiel, in Germanjr, devised a means of punc- 
turing the spinal canal itself in the lumbar region (the 
lowest part of the small of the back) for the purpose of 
drawing off some of the fluid for examination. This 
suggested to Bier, then of Kiel, who was apparently 
ignorant of Coming's work, that cocaine could be in- 
jected through a hollow needle inserted into the spinal 
canal by " lumbar puncture " and so produce anaesthesia 
of all the body below this point. This method was 
published by him in 1899, and was soon repeated in Amer- 
ica. In France, however, it has been practised more 
than elsewhere, Tupper, of Paris, having successfully 
done over two hundred operations by "spinal an- 
aesthesia." All of the body below the diaphragm can 
thus be deprived of sensibility. The method will prob- 
ably never replace ether and chloroform, but in many 
cases is a valuable aid to the surgeon. But it has its 
dangers and its inconveniences. The ideal anaesthetic 
is not that which destroys sensibility and yet leaves 
the patient perfectly conscious, as spinal anaesthesia 
does. A patient to whom I recently proposed it for 
certain special reasons rejected it, saying, with probable 
truth, that she could never bear the strain of lying on 
the table perfectly conscious of all that was being done 
and frightened by any surgical emergency which might 
easily arise in such a long, difficult, and dangerous 
operation. The ideal anaesthetic is that which will 
abolish pain and consciousness without danger to life. 
The twentieth century will undoubtedly see the discovery 
of this safe and efficient anaesthetic. 

ANTISEPSIS 

But the limits of surgical progress were not yet reached. 
Let me quote again from the address before alluded to : 

227 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

"Even the introduction of anaesthesia, however, did 
not rid surgery of all its terrors. The acute pain of the 
operation was abolished, but the after - suffering, as 
I know only too well, in my early surgical days, was 
something dreadful to see. The parched lips of the 
poor sufferer, tossing uneasily during sleepless nights; 
wounds reeking with pus, and patients dying by scores 
from blood-poisoning, from erysipelas, from tetanus, 
from gangrene, were only too familiar sights in the pre- 
antiseptic days. Then, again, there arose one of these 
deliverers of the human race whose name can never 
be forgotten and whose fame will last so long as time 
shall endure. Jenner, Warren, and Lister are a tri- 
umvirate of names of which any profession may well be 
proud. Thank God, they all sprang from virile Anglo- 
Saxon loins! No praise, no reward, no fame is too 
great for them. That Lord Lister still lives to see the 
triumph of his marvellous services to humanity is a 
joy to all of us. And when the profession arose en masse, 
within the last few years, at the International Congress of 
Berlin, and at the meeting of the British Medical As- 
sociation in Montreal, and welcomed him with cheer 
after cheer, it was but a feeble expression of gratitude 
for benefits which no words can express. 

"Before Lister's day erysipelas, tetanus, gangrene, 
and blood-poisoning in its various phases were the con- 
stant attendant of every surgeon. They were dreaded 
guests at almost any operation ; and when in rare cases 
we obtained primary union without a drop of pus, with- 
out fever, and with but little suffering, it was a mar- 
vellous achievement. Now it is precisely reversed. 
The surgeon who does not get primary union without 
a drop of pus, with no fever, and with little suffering, 
asks himself — what was the fault in my technic? To 
open the head, the abdomen, or the chest thirty years 
ago was almost equivalent to signing the death-warrant 

228 



SURGERY 

of a patient. The early mortality of ovariotomy was 
about sixty per cent. ; two out of three died. Now man}? 
a surgeon can point to a series of one hundred abdomi- 
nal operations with a fatality of only two or three per 
cent. When Sir Spencer Wells recorded his first one 
thousand cases of ovariotomy it was calculated that after 
deducting the years which the patients who died from 
the operation would have lived had no operation been 
done the net result of the thousand cases was an addi- 
tion of twenty thousand years to human life. One thou- 
sand ovariotomies under antiseptic precautions at the 
present would certainly add at least thirty thousand 
years to human life. Would not such a guerdon be 
enough for any man? 

" This, too, is a direct result of laborious laboratory 
researches, beginning with the investigations of Liebig 
and Pasteur on fermentation. Lister went still further. 
Even before the discovery of the bacteria of suppuration, 
of tetanus, and of erysipelas he showed us experimentally 
how, by surgical cleanliness, we could avoid all infec- 
tion and so banish these r pests from our hospitals and 
bring life and health to many who otherwise would 
have perished from operations which are now perfectly 
safe. 

"The mortality of compound fractures in the pre- 
antiseptic days was about sixty per cent. It was one of 
the most dreaded of all accidents. Its mortality now is 
perhaps not over three per cent., and the mortality from 
sepsis after such a fracture, in the hands of well-in- 
structed surgeons, is almost nil. Prior to Lister's day 
the mortality of major amputations varied from fifty to 
sixty-three per cent. Now it is from ten to twenty per 
cent. And so I might go on with operation after opera- 
tion and show how they have become so safe that one 
need not dread any, saving exceptional cases. 

" These two modern discoveries, anaesthesia and anti- 

229 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

sepsis, have utterly revolutionized modern surgery. 
They have made possible operations which, by reason 
of their length and pain and danger, were utterly un- 
justifiable in former days., but are now the daily occupa- 
tion of a busy surgeon. And, far better than this, they 
have enabled us to bring to homes and hearts, which 
otherwise would have been broken up and wrung with 
sorrow, the comfort of life restored to dear ones upon 
whom depended the happiness and support of the fami- 
lies. Translate figures into happy hearts and prosperous 
homes if you can, and then you can tell me what War- 
ren and Lister have done for humanity!" 

The result of these two wonderful discoveries has 
been to separate us from the surgical past, as by a great 
gulf. 

"Great theologians, such as a Calvin or a Jonathan 
Edwards, were they recalled to life, could discourse as 
learnedly as ever of predestination and free will ; great 
preachers, as a Beecher or a Spurgeon, could stir our 
souls and warm our hearts as of old; great jurists, as a 
Justinian or a Marshall, could expound the same prin- 
ciples of law which hold good for all time ; great forensic 
orators, as a Burke or a Webster, could convince us by 
the same arguments and arouse us by the same invec- 
tives or the same eloquence that made our fathers willing 
captives to their silver tongues. But to-day, so rapid 
has been our surgical progress, a Velpeau, a Sir William 
Ferguson, or a Pancoast, all of whom have died within 
the last thirty years, could not teach modern surgical 
principles nor perform a modern surgical operation. 
Even our every-day surgical vocabulary — staphylococ- 
cus, streptococcus, infection, immunity, antisepsis and 
asepsis, toxin and antitoxin — would be unintelligible 
jargon to him; and our modern operations on the brain, 

230 



SURGERY 

the chest, the abdomen, and the pelvis would make 
him wonder whether we had not lost our senses, until, 
seeing the almost uniform and almost painless recov- 
eries, he would thank God for the magnificent prog- 
ress of the last half - century, which had vouchsafed 
such magical, nay, such almost divine, power to the 
modern surgeon." 

THE SURGERY OF WAR 

One of the immediate consequences of the introduc- 
tion of the antiseptic method has been a remarkable 
mitigation of the horrors of war. Our recent war with 
Spain has proved, and the present military operations 
in the Philippines and of the British in South Africa 
will still further prove, its advantages. Witness a little 
book written by Professor von Esmarch, of Kiel, Germany, 
with the apt title, The Fight of Humanity Against the 
Horrors of War; with an appendix, entitled, "The 
Samaritan on the Battle-field." One of the most valua- 
ble means for the preservation of human life is carried 
by every soldier in a modern civilized army as a part of 
his regulation outfit, a "First Aid Package" for the 
treatment of any wound or injury ; and one of the most 
valuable and interesting papers read before the Amer- 
ican Surgical Association, at its meeting in Chicago in 
1899, was by Professor Senn on the "First Aid Pack- 
age." This first aid package contains an antiseptic 
dressing, which can be applied to all but the gravest 
wounds for the purpose of preventing infection, which 
is the principal danger to life after accident or injury. 
The universal testimony of our surgeons in Cuba was 
that by its use most wounds were prevented from be- 
coming infected, and, therefore, inflamed, and that the 
number of operations was greatly diminished by reason 
of its use. 

231 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

BACTERIOLOGY 

In experimental science, two methods of progress are 
observed; first, in actual practice certain methods are 
adopted because they are found to be the most advan- 
tageous and useful, though we cannot explain why it 
is so — i. e., practice outstrips theory. Again, as a result 
of experimental investigation, certain facts are discov- 
ered which explain why the practical methods just al- 
luded to are the best, and this in turn suggests further 
improvements in our practice — i. e., theory outstrips prac- 
tice and enlarges its domain. Thus outstripping theory, 
the practical advance made by Lister was an example 
of the first. His striking results in turn stimulated 
scientific observers to make new discoveries of the great- 
est importance, and thus science immensely improved 
and widened our practical methods. 

No definite year or day can be assigned as the birth- 
date of Lord Lister's antiseptic methods, as we can, for 
instance, for vaccination or for anaesthesia. We may 
assume, at least for this country, the summer of 
1876 as the starting - point. During that year Lord 
Lister attended the International Medical Congress held 
in Philadelphia, and demonstrated his then methods 
and convinced a few surgeons of their immense advan- 
tages. Even before that date there had been very many 
experiments and observations, especially on the blood. 
In 1863 Davaine, in France, had discovered little rod-like 
bodies in the blood in wool-sorters' disease, or anthrax, 
which he named from their shape "bacteria," or "little 
rods." This name has been adopted for all forms of 
germs, though many of them are not rod-like in their 
shape. Not until 1881 was the cause of inflammation 
and suppuration (the formation of pus or " matter ") 
discovered. In that year Ogston, of Aberdeen, pub- 
lished experiments which he believed demonstrated the 

232 



SURGERY 

fact that certain bacteria were the cause of suppuration. 
Since then this has been amply confirmed not only by 
experiments upon animals, but by observation in man. 
In 1882 Robert Koch, of Berlin, discovered the cause 
of tuberculosis, a little rod-like body, which is named 
the " bacillus " of tuberculosis. In 1883 Fehleisen dis- 
covered the germ of erysipelas, and in 1887 Nicolaier 
and Rosenbaum discovered the bacillus of tetanus or 
lockjaw. So recent have been the discoveries in bac- 
teriology which have led to vast improvements in our 
methods of treatment of wounds and the performance 
of operations. 

While the principles established by Lord Lister have 
remained unchanged, the details in the treatment have 
been greatly simplified and made more efficient. For 
the information of the general reader, let me state a few 
facts. Bacteria are divided into two principal classes, 
in accordance with their form. One, known as "cocci," 
from the Greek word coccus — " berry " — may be likened 
to billiard-balls. Some of these occur in bunches, which 
have been likened to bunches of grapes, and hence 
are called, again from a Greek term, "staphylo- 
cocci." Others are arranged in chains, like beads, 
and are called "streptococci." These last are very 
much more virulent and dangerous than the staphylo- 
cocci. Both of these produce pus or matter, and they 
are the most widely diffused and most common forms 
found in infected or suppurating wounds. One form 
is the cause of erysipelas. A second form, known as 
"bacilli," may be likened to a lead-pencil. Among the 
various bacilli that have been discovered are those of 
tuberculosis, glanders, tetanus or lockjaw, etc. I omit 
many others found in medical disorders, as they do not 
concern this paper. How important these discoveries 
are may be seen by the following facts : Tuberculosis, 
next to that of suppuration, is, perhaps, the most widely 

233 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

extended infection to which man, as well as animals, is 
liable. We are all familiar with it in the form of "con- 
sumption," but the non-medical reader is, perhaps, not 
aware of the fact that it affects not only the lungs, but 
also the bowels in consumption of the bowels ; the bones, 
as is seen by every surgeon almost daily, and especially 
as the cause of the crooked backs seen in spine diseases ; 
in the joints, as is seen in hip- joint disease, white swell- 
ing of the knee, ankle-joint disease, and similar disease 
of all the other large joints of the body ; in the brain, in 
tubercular meningitis; in the abdominal cavity, in tu- 
bercular peritonitis; in the skin, in certain forms of 
ulceration, commonly called lupus; in the glands, as 
in the swollen glands, or "bunches," in the neck ; and 
endless other varieties which I need not name. 

The bacillus of lockjaw is found in great abundance 
around stables, and this explains the fact that hostlers, 
drivers, cavalrymen, all of whom had to do with horses, 
are especially liable to attacks of lockjaw. Moreover, 
certain bacteria thrive best when exposed to the open 
air. Other bacteria, and among them the bacilli of lock- 
jaw, thrive best when the air is excluded, and this ex- 
plains the danger of treading on a rusty nail, which is 
popularly and rightly known as peculiarly liable to pro- 
duce lockjaw. The reason is not because it is a nail, 
nor because it is old, nor because it is rusty, but because 
from the earth in which it lies it is most apt to be the 
means of introducing into a punctured wound the bacilli 
of lockjaw. Such a wound bleeds but very little, the 
blood soon crusts and excludes the air, and if any of the 
bacilli of lockjaw have been carried into the body, they 
find in such a closed wound, from which the air is ex- 
cluded, the most favorable conditions for growth and 
infection of the whole body. Knowing these facts from 
experiment, the treatment is clear. Lay open such a 
wound and disinfect it. 

234 



SURGERY 

These two forms, the "cocci," or berry-like bacteria, 
and the "bacilli," or rod-like bacteria, comprise the 
great majority of dangerous bacteria. 

It must be remembered that there is an enormous num- 
ber of bacteria which are not dangerous; some of them 
are entirely harmless even if introduced into the human 
body. Others are the bacteria of decomposition, or pu- 
trefaction, which are known as " saprophytic " bacteria. 
All of the harmless ones are known as "non-patho- 
genic," that is, non-producers of disease. Those which 
produce disease are known as "pathogenic," and those 
which produce suppuration as "pyogenic " or pus-pro- 
ducing bacteria. 

All of these bacteria are plants, and not, as is very 
frequently supposed, animals of a low form. The dan- 
ger from their introduction into the body can be best 
appreciated, perhaps, by the statement of Belfield, who 
estimated that a single bacterium which weighs, ap- 
proximately, only the 1-40,000,000 part of a grain, if 
given plenty of food and plenty of "elbow room," would 
so rapidly develop that in three days it would form 
a mass weighing 800 tons! It is the old story of the 
blacksmith who was to get a penny for the first nail, 
two for the second, four for the third, and so on till a set 
of shoes would cost more than Crcesus could pay for. 

The effect of the bacteria has been determined by ex- 
periment to be proportionate to the dose. A cubic cen- 
timetre is a cube two-fifths of an inch on each side. 
One-tenth of such a cube of pure culture of one bacte- 
rium [Proteus vulgaris) contains 225,000,000 bacteria, 
and if injected under the skin of a rabbit will produce 
death. Less than 18,000,000 will produce no effect 
whatever. Of one kind of staphylococcus, if 250,000,- 
000 are introduced under the skin of a rabbit there will 
be produced a small abscess, but it requires 1,000,000,000 
to produce speedy death. On the other hand, of the 

235 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

bacillus of lockjaw it requires only iooo to produce 
death, so virulent is this germ. 

Moreover, their effect on tissues and persons in differ- 
ent states varies very much. Thus, it is found that when 
a certain number of bacteria are injected into the cavity 
of the abdomen of an animal, if the animal is healthy 
and the peritoneum (the thin lining membrane of the 
abdomen) is healthy, the animal will recover perfect- 
ly well; but if the peritoneum be scraped and torn 
(and it must be remembered that the healthy peri- 
toneum is devoid of sensation), that the same dose 
which before was harmless will now produce a violent 
peritonitis and very likely death. The practical lesson 
from this experiment upon animals is very evident. 
Every surgeon who opens the abdomen is most careful, 
if possible, not to injure the peritoneum, but manipu- 
lates with the greatest care lest fatal results follow any 
serious injury to that membrane. So, too, if the general 
health be impaired, it is found that an injection from 
which a healthy animal would recover will be followed 
by fatal consequences if the general health is below 
par. Again, if an animal has a simple fracture of his 
thigh-bone, and that is the only injury that he receives, 
no infection from the exterior having occurred, he will 
make a good recovery ; but if at the same time he receives 
a lacerated wound, it may be even in another part of the 
body, and this wound, not being cared for most scru- 
pulously, becomes infected, the infection will fasten on 
the distant spot of least resistance, the broken thigh- 
bone, and will produce a most dangerous and very fre- 
quently fatal form of inflammation. 

I need scarcely point out in this connection, as in fact 
throughout this entire consideration of bacteriology, 
how important a part in its development has been played 
by experiment upon animals. The experimental facts 
just stated are of vital importance in the treatment of 

236 



SURGERY 

surgical diseases, and evidently could not have been 
determined upon mankind. It is not too much to say 
that had vivisection been restricted or prohibited the sur- 
gery of to-day would be the barbarous surgery of thirty 
years ago. 

Even granting that an enormous number of the bacteria 
are harmless, the wonder is that with so many foes on 
every hand we live an ordinary lifetime. Fortunately, 
however, in the human body there is not only a lack of 
food sufficient and "elbow room" enough for them to 
work their dire effects, but there is that which "makes 
for righteousness " in our physical organization as well 
as in our souls. 

The moment that bacteria are introduced into the 
human body a certain number of cells hasten to destroy 
them. These are called "phagocytes" or devouring 
cells, because they eat up the bacteria. Whether the 
patient survives or dies depends on whether the bac- 
teria get the upper hand of the phagocytes or the phago- 
cytes the upper hand of the bacteria. 

These statements are very easy to make, but the re- 
sults have only been obtained by prolonged and laborious 
investigations in the laboratory and by experiments 
upon animals which have demonstrated these facts. 

The bacteria are recognized by various methods: 
First, by form. Many which are identical in appear- 
ance, however, differ greatly in effects. A handful of 
turnip-seed and a handful of rape-seed look very much 
alike, but if they are planted the plants differ so greatly 
that we can recognize the difference in the seed by the 
difference in the crop ; hence the second method of recog- 
nizing differences in bacteria is by planting them. Dif- 
ferent methods have been practised. Some are sown on 
the raw surface of a potato ; others on bread paste ; others 
in certain jelly-like materials, such as gelatine or agar- 
agar. It was soon found as a result of these experi- 

237 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

merits that the bacteria flourished best, some in one 
soil, some in another. Again, the crops of mould which 
come from them differ greatly in color, some being 
black, some red, some white, some yellow, etc. A third 
method also is by staining them with various dyes, when 
it is found that some bacteria will take one stain best, 
others will take another, and so on through the whole list. 

At first it was thought that these bacteria existed 
chiefly in the air, and hence in Lister's early methods 
powerful spray - producing apparatus were used ; but 
while it is true that they do exist in the air, it is found 
that this is not the principal source of infection. There 
is no substance (which has not been disinfected) that 
is not covered with the germs of these little plants. They 
exist in our food and drink; but the intestine is, one 
may say, a natural home in which many exist without 
harm to the body. For surgical purposes their ex- 
istence is most important, first, in the earth, where, as 
I have already shown, the bacillus of lockjaw is most fre- 
quently found. So, too, the bacillus of wool - sorters' 
disease (Anthrax) exists in the earth. If an animal 
dying of anthrax is buried, worms coming from the 
carcass up through the ground carry the infection, so 
that other animals grazing over this surface will become 
readity infected. The means by which we can avoid 
infection from the earth is very evident, viz., every 
person who has been run over by the cars or who 
has fallen on the ground and broken his leg, etc., must 
have the wound most carefully cleansed from all dirt. 
If this is scrupulously done the danger of tetanus or 
other similar earth-born bacterial disease is almost 
nothing. 

A still greater danger to every patient, however, is 
found in the clothing, in the skin, and all dressings 
which are applied to wounds. The skin is full of bacteria 
of the most dangerous kind; even the spotless hands 

238 



SURGERY 

of the bride, in the eyes of the surgeon, are dirty. No 
one can touch a wound with ordinarily clean hands with- 
out infecting it. All clothing, dressings — e.g., lint and 
soft linen rags, and such like — are full of bacteria of 
the most dangerous kind. Perhaps the most dangerous 
place is the space under the nails of the surgeon's hand, 
for the mere mechanical removal of any dirt under the 
nails by cleansing them does not make them clean sur- 
gically. The nails must be cut short and prepared in 
a way I shall mention directly, or they are full of peril 
to any patient into whose wound a non-disinfected finger 
is introduced. Again, another source of infection which 
thirty years ago we never thought of is our instruments. 
Then instruments were washed with soap and water and 
were made clean to the eye, but they were still covered 
with invisible death-dealing bacteria which hid especi- 
ally in the joints and irregularities of the surface of 
all instruments. 

All of these somewhat detailed statements lead up 
to a consideration of the difference between the old sur- 
gery and the new. Thirty years ago when an operation 
was to be performed or an accident cared for we laid 
out our instruments which were visibly clean, used 
them with hands which were as clean as those of any 
gentleman, and applied soft linen rags, lint, and other 
dressings. To-day we know that these apparently 
clean instruments, hands, and dressings are covered 
with bacteria, which produce infection, and, therefore, 
suppuration, and frequently run riot in blood-poisoning, 
erysipelas, lockjaw, and death. 

How does a modern surgeon perform an operation? 
All bacteria can be killed by heat. Cold has no effect 
upon them, but the temperature of boiling water (21 2° 
Fahr.) is sufficient to destroy them all usually within 
fifteen or twenty minutes; hence, first, instruments 
are all boiled; and, secondly, dressings are either 

239 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

steeped in such solutions as have been found to destroy 
the bacteria, such as carbolic acid or corrosive sublimate, 
or other preparations, or, still better, are placed in ster- 
ilizers, that is to say, metal cylinders, which are then 
filled with steam, usually under pressure, so as to 
obtain a temperature of 240 Fahr., and thus make sure 
of the death of the bacteria. Unfortunately, our hands 
cannot be boiled or steamed, but the modern surgeon 
first uses soap and water most vigorously over his hands 
and arms up to the elbow. The nails are cut short and 
the scrubbing-brush is especially applied to the nails 
so as to clean the fingers at the ends. Then by various 
means, such as pure alcohol, which is one of our best 
disinfectants, or solutions of corrosive sublimate, and 
other means too technical to mention, the hands are 
sterilized. Rubber gloves are frequently used, so as to 
preclude infection, as they can be steamed to 240 Fahr. 
Removing at least his outer clothing, the surgeon 
puts on a cotton gown which has been steamed and 
so made free from bacteria. Not a few surgeons also 
wear sterilized caps, so that any bacteria in the hair 
will not be sifted into a wound, and some wear respira- 
tors of sterile gauze over the mouth and beard for the 
same reason. All the dressings have been sterilized by 
superheated steam. All the threads by which blood- 
vessels are tied have been either boiled or otherwise ster- 
ilized. All the material for sewing up the wounds, and 
the needles with which they are sewn, have been similarly 
disinfected. The skin of the patient is also sterilized, 
usually the day beforehand, in the same manner in 
which the surgeon's hands have been disinfected, and 
are disinfected a second time just at the moment of the 
operation. If the case is one of accident, such as a 
crushed leg from a trolley-car, all of the dirt is most care- 
fully washed away with soap and water, and the parts 
are disinfected, not only on the exterior, but also by pro- 

240 



SURGERY 

longed washing with some cleansing agent in the inte- 
rior of the wound, the patient being under the influence 
of ether, of course. 

It is easily seen from such a description of a modern 
operation that no case can receive due care in one of our 
modern homes, even the best. The facilities do not ex- 
ist, and hence surgeons are more and more declining to 
do operations, whether for accident or disease, in private 
houses, except in a case of absolute necessity, and a 
happy custom is growing more and more in favor with 
the community of having all operations and all acci- 
dents cared for in a well-equipped hospital. 

RESULTS OF MODERN SURGERY 

As the result of our ability to perform operations with- 
out pain, thanks to anaesthesia, and our ability to per- 
form operations without infection, and, therefore, almost 
without danger, thanks to antisepsis, the range of mod- 
ern surgery has been enormously increased. Unless 
one has lived through the old surgery and into the new 
he scarcely can appreciate this widening of the field of 
operative surgery. Thirty years ago, in consequence 
of the great danger of opening the head, the chest, or 
the abdomen, or, in fact, of making an incision anywhere 
about the body, the surgeon never dared to interfere 
until he was obliged to do so. Hence, not only were 
many modern operations not even thought of, but in ob- 
scure cases we had to wait until time and disease devel- 
oped symptoms and physical signs such that we were 
sure of our diagnosis, and then, knowing that death 
would follow if we did not interfere, we ventured to op- 
erate. Now we anticipate such a fatal termination, 
and in most cases can avert it. In perhaps no class of 
cases has the benefit of this immunity from infection 
and danger been shown than in the obscure diseases of 
Q 241 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the brain and the abdomen. To-day, if we are uncertain 
as to whether there is serious danger going on which, if 
unchecked, will result in death, we deliberately open 
the one cavity or the other, in order to find out the exact 
state of affairs. Supposing that the mischief is trifling, 
or even that there is no mischief, we then know how to 
deal with the symptoms which have been puzzling us. 
So far as the exploratory operation is concerned, the 
patient recovers from it in a short time, and, meantime, 
perhaps has also been cured of the symptoms which 
were before so ill understood. If any serious disease is 
found, in the majority of cases we can cope with it suc- 
cessfully. Before the days of antisepsis and anaesthesia 
the field of operation was greatly restricted, and practi- 
cally the removal of tumors, amputations, and a few other 
operations were all that were done. Now all the then in- 
accessible organs are attacked with an intrepidity born 
of an assurance of safety. Recovery usually sets the 
seal of approval on the judgment of the surgeon. Thir- 
ty years ago, taking all operations together, fully one- 
third of our patients died, many of them often from slight 
operations which were followed by infection. To-day, 
including even the far more grave operations which are 
now done, the general mortality will scarcely exceed five 
per cent., and many surgeons are able, in a series of sev- 
eral hundred operations, to save ninety-seven out of 
every hundred patients 1 

SERUM TREATMENT 

Another remarkable recent discovery, the result of 
numerous and careful investigations in the laboratory, 
is a wholly new means of treatment, viz., that method 
which is known as orrhotherapy, or serumtherapy, or 
the treatment by injecting certain antitoxins under the 
skin by a hypodermatic syringe. It would lead me too 

242 



SURGERY 

far to enter into the theory upon which these were first 
used. Suffice it to say that in the blood of an animal 
that has passed through a certain disorder the liquid 
part of the blood contains an antidote or antitoxin. If 
a certain amount of this is injected under the skin of an 
animal or man suffering from the same disorder in its 
incipient stages, the antitoxin prevents the development 
of the disease. The use of this method has thus far 
been much more medical than surgical, and its results 
in diphtheria and other medical disorders have been per- 
fectly marvellous. In surgery, however, less favor- 
able results have been obtained, but in all probability 
in the future we shall be able to do for some of our surgi- 
cal disorders what the physician can do to-day for diph- 
theria. [For the results in diphtheria, see Professor Os- 
ier's paper.] 

There has also been discovered another means which 
in surgery has rendered some valuable service. From 
certain organs, as, for instance, the thyroid gland (the 
gland whose enlargement produces goitre), we can ob- 
tain a very potent extract of great value. In cases of 
goitre very noteworthy results have already been ob- 
tained by the administration of the thyroid extract. A 
number of other organs in the body of animals have 
been used to combat certain disorders in the human 
body with advantage. The chief development of both of 
these new forms of medication, however, will take place 
in the twentieth century. 

INSTRUMENTS OF PRECISION 

Another direction in which the century has seen enor- 
mous progress is in the introduction of instruments of 
precision. When I was a student in the early 60 's, in- 
struction in microscopy was conspicuous only by its 
absence from our medical curriculum. Now every stu- 

243 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

dent who graduates is more or less of an accomplished 
microscopist, and carries into his practice the methods 
and observations which the microscope furnishes. At 
the same period I remember being greatly interested 
in a discussion which two of my teachers had as to 
whether it was possible to make an application accurate- 
ly to the vocal chords in the larynx. Now every tyro in 
medicine makes such applications to the larynx as a 
routine procedure in cases requiring it, and similar 
methods have been applied by the ophthalmoscope to 
examine the interior of the eye; the rhinoscope, to ex- 
amine the interior of the nose ; the otoscope, for examina- 
tion of the ear ; and other similar instruments for ex- 
amining all the other hollow organs in the body. If I 
add to these the lxypodermatic syringe; the aspirator, 
which may be described as a large hypodermatic syringe 
for suction instead of injection ; the clinical thermometer, 
which was introduced in the late 6o's; the hemostatic 
forceps, for controlling hemorrhage by seizing the blood- 
vessels and clamping them till we have time to tie them ; 
and other instruments intended to facilitate our oper- 
ative methods, it will be seen at once that the armamenta- 
rium of the modern surgeon is very different from that 
of his predecessor at the beginning, or even at the mid- 
dle, of the century. 

THE RONTGEN RAY 

One of those extraordinary discoveries which startle 
the whole world came nearly at the end of the nine- 
teenth century, in the winter of 1895-96. At that time 
a modest professor in the University of Wiirzburg an- 
nounced that he could readily see the skeleton inside 
the body through the flesh! Naturally, the first an- 
nouncement was received with almost absolute incre- 
dulity ; but very soon his discovery was confirmed from 

244 



SURGERY 

all sides, and it has now taken its place among the recog- 
nized phenomena of science. By means of certain rays, 
which, being of unknown nature, were called " X "-rays, 
after the well-known mathematical X. or unknown 
quantity, Professor Rontgen has shown us that not only 
can the bones be seen, but that almost every substance 
in the body can be seen and reproduced in pictures. The 
reason for this is because they are all obstacles to 
the passage of these X-rays and so produce shadows 
on a sensitized photographic plate. If the exposure is 
sufficiently prolonged the rays penetrate even through 
the bones and act upon the photographic plate, so that 
no shadow remains. If the rays are allowed to pene- 
trate for a shorter time the bones show dense shadows, 
and one can get a light shadow of the soft parts. If 
the exposure is still shorter, then we can recognize the 
dense shadow of the bone, the much less dense shadows 
of the muscles, and the still lighter shadows of the layer 
of fat immediately under the skin. The heart can be 
seen beating, and its shadow is now a well-recognized 
feature in skiagraphs of the chest. At first it was thought 
impossible to discover anything inside the bony skull, 
but there are now on record nearly a score of instances 
in which bullets have been detected within the skull, 
and after trephining have been found and removed ex- 
actly at the location indicated. It is a very common 
thing now to locate a piece of steel or other similar foreign 
bodies within the eyeball by the method of Dr. Sweet, 
or some similar method, within one or two millimetres 
(a millimetre is one-twenty-fifth of an inch). It is now 
well recognized that even stones in the kidney will throw 
shadows sufficiently strong for them to be recognized, 
and by noting their level in relation to the vertebrae we 
can tell precisely in what part of the kidney to make 
the incision in order to find and remove them. It has 
happened to myself and many other surgeons in the past 

245 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

to cut down upon a kidney, believing that there was 
a stone in the kidney, only to find that we had been 
misled by the apparently clear symptoms of such a foreign 
body. In future no such mistake should be made by 
any surgeon within reach of a skilful skiagrapher. Un- 
fortunately, gall-stones and numerous other foreign 
bodies, vegetable substances such as beans, corn, wood, 
etc., being as transparent to the X-raj^s as are the soft 
parts, are not revealed by means of this new method 
of investigation; but cavities in the lung, abscesses 
in bone, and similar diseases which produce thinning of 
the lung, bone, and other such organs, and so lighten 
instead of deepen the shadows, can now be recognized 
by means of light spots in the pictures as well as others 
by means of a shadow. 

I spoke a moment ago of the need of a " skilful " skia- 
grapher, for it must be remembered that there may be 
the same difference in the personal skill, and, therefore, 
in the reliability of the results in skiagraphy as there 
is in photography. A poor photographer will get very 
different results from a skilful one, even if he uses pre- 
cisely the same quality of plates and precisely the same 
camera. Personal skill and experience in the skia- 
grapher is, therefore, one of the most important elements 
in success. It must be remembered also that the X-rays 
in not a few cases may mislead us. I have, personally, 
fractured a bone on account of deformity, taken an X- 
ray picture immediately after the operation, the picture 
showing not the slightest evidence of a fracture, which 
I absolutely knew existed. Moreover, foreign bodies 
found on the outside of the person may mislead us, as, 
for example, the metal part of suspenders, a coin in 
one's pocket, and such like. They look in the picture 
as if they were inside rather than outside the body, and 
any article the shape or size of which would not reveal 
its nature might easily be mistaken for a foreign body 

246 



SURGERY 

within the patient. Therefore, in many cases only 
an expert can determine precisely what the skiagraph 
means. I especially mention this, because there is a 
tendency at present to utilize skiagraphs in court in 
order to convince the jury that such a picture is an evi- 
dence of malpractice. Such pictures always need an in- 
terpreter in order to judge correctly of their meaning. 
It is precisely as if the jury were asked to look through 
a microscope. I have been myself accustomed to use 
the microscope for thirty years, but there are many in- 
stances even yet in which I am obliged to ask a pathol- 
ogist or bacteriologist what I really am looking at in 
the microscope. While one may make a mistake of small 
moment in some cases, yet if a man's life or liberty or 
purse is at the mercy of a jury which does not know 
how to interpret a skiagraph, and, may, therefore, give a 
verdict which is " precisely wrong/' as Professor Lincoln, 
my old teacher of Latin, used to call many of our trans- 
lations, it will be a very serious matter and lead to gross 
injustice. 

CITY AND VILLAGE HOSPITALS 

Another great improvement in our means of caring 
for our surgical patients is the establishment of hospitals 
all over the land. These, happily, are not limited to our 
great cities, but in every country town and not a few 
large villages small but well-equipped and well-managed 
hospitals have been established which have done in- 
calculable good. It is not too much to say that every 
city or town establishing such a hospital is repaid a 
hundredfold. 

TRAINED NURSES 

The trained nurse has fortunately come to stay. In 
fact, our antiseptic methods as above described have 
made the trained nurse indispensable. The old nurse, 

247 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

who, by many clumsy experiments on her patients, 
had obtained a certain rule-of-thumb knowledge of the 
care of the sick, can no longer assist in a surgical opera- 
tion or properly care for any surgical patient. The 
modern nurse must of necessity be a well-educated, 
well-trained woman, knowing thoroughly modern anti- 
septic methods, and on the alert to observe every symp- 
tom of improvement and every signal of danger. 

Without a well-trained nurse it is impossible at the 
present day properly to care for any serious surgical 
case, and I gladly bear witness to the intelligence, fidelity, 
and skill of scores of nurses who have assisted me, and 
without whom I should have felt as one blade of a scis- 
sors without its fellow. 

SPECIAL OPERATIONS 

Amputations and Compound Fractures. — Having 
now traced the different modes of thought which have 
aided surgical progress in the nineteenth century and 
the improved means of investigation, let us turn finally 
to the progress in individual operations. As to ampu- 
tations and compound fractures, I have already in- 
dicated the immense improvements which have fol- 
lowed the introduction of anaesthesia, and especially 
of antisepsis, which have brought the mortality of am- 
putations down from fifty or sixty per cent, to ten or 
fifteen per cent., and in compound fractures, once so 
dreaded, since the mortality was not infrequently as high 
as two out of three, to a relatively insignificant danger. 

Tumors. — In no department, perhaps, has the intro- 
duction of antisepsis, and the use of catgut and silk 
ligatures after the antiseptic method, brought about a 
greater improvement than in operations for tumors. 
The startling reluctance of Sir Astley Cooper to operate 
on King George IV. for so simple and small a tumor 

248 






SURGERY 

as a wen, lest erysipelas might follow and even destroy 
his life, is in marked contrast with the success and 
therefore the boldness of modern surgeons. Tumors 
in all parts of the body, whether they be external or 
internal, whether they involve the wall of the chest 
or are inside the abdomen, are now removed with 
almost perfect safety. Anaesthesia has made it pos- 
sible to dissect out tumors in so dangerous a region 
as the neck, where the surgeon is confronted with ad- 
hesions to the jugular vein, the carotid artery, and the 
nerves of the neck and of the arm, with the greatest 
impunity. Such an operation not uncommonly lasts 
from three-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half, 
and involves often the removal of two or three inches 
of the jugular vein and many of the large nerves, the re- 
moval of which a few years ago would have been deemed 
an impossibility. 

Goitre. — One of the most striking instances of progress 
is operations on goitre. Writing in 1876, the late Profes- 
sor Samuel D. Gross noted it as something remarkable 
that Dr. Green, of Portland, Maine, had removed seven 
goitres with two deaths, and the late Dr. Maury, of Phila- 
delphia, had extirpated two goitres with one death. In 
marked contrast to this Professor Kocher, of Berne, 
in 1895, reported one thousand cases, of which eight 
hundred and seventy were non-cancerous, and he lost 
of these last but eleven cases, or a little over one per 
cent. In 1898 he reported six hundred additional cases, 
with only one death in the five hundred and fifty-six 
non-cancerous cases, or a mortality of only 0.1 per cent. 
It will be seen, therefore, that an operation which a few 
years ago was excessively fatal has become almost, one 
might say, a perfectly safe operation. 

Surgery of the Bones. — Operations on bones, apart 
from amputations, show also a similar improvement. 
In cases of deformity following fracture we now do not 

249 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

hesitate to cut down upon the bone and refracture it 
or remove the deformed portion, join the ends together, 
dress the part in plaster of Paris to secure fixation, and 
have the patient recover with little or no fever and no sup- 
puration. Above the elbow a large nerve runs in a furrow 
in the arm bone, and in case of fracture this is liable to 
be torn and a portion of it destroyed. The result of 
it is paralysis of all the muscles on the back of the 
forearm from the elbow down and consequent inability 
to extend either wrist or fingers, making the hand al- 
most useless. In a number of cases the nerve has been 
sought for and found, but the ends have been too far 
apart for successful union and sewing them together. 
In such cases we do not hesitate now, in order to bring 
the two ends of the nerve together, to remove one or two 
inches of the arm bone, wire the shortened bone, sew the 
now approximated ends of the nerve together, put the 
arm in plaster, and as soon as the wound is healed, with 
appropriate later treatment to the muscles we can obtain 
in a reasonable number of cases a perfect, or almost 
perfect, union of the nerves with a re-establishment of 
the usefulness of the hand. 

In very many cases the bones are deformed as a re- 
sult of rickets, and in some cases in consequence of hip- 
joint disease. In such cases the leg is crooked or flexed, 
and cannot be used for walking. Such cases of stiff 
joints and crooked legs are now operated on, one might 
say, wholesale. At the International Medical Congress, 
held in Copenhagen in 1884, Professor Macewen, of Glas- 
gow, reported 1800 operations on 1267 limbs in 704 pa- 
tients, in which he had sawn or chiselled through the bones 
so as to fracture them, placed them in a straight position, 
and after a few weeks the bone has become consolidated 
and the leg or arm made straight. Every one of these 
operations was successful, excepting five cases, and 
even these deaths were not due to the operation, but 

250 



SURGERY 

to some other disorder, such as an unexpected attack 
of pneumonia, diphtheria, or scarlet fever. 

Surgery of the Head and Brain. — In the surgery of 
the head we find one of the most remarkable illustra- 
tions of the modern progress of surgery. Fractures of 
the skull have been the most dangerous and fatal of 
accidents until within a short time. Of course, many 
of them must necessarily, even now, be fatal, from the 
wide-spread injury to the bones and the brain. But our 
modern methods, by which we can disinfect the cavities 
of the ear, the nose, and the mouth, with which these 
fractures often communicate, and through these avenues 
become infected, are so successful that such cases, in- 
stead of being looked upon as hopeless, are in a ma- 
jority of instances followed by recovery. Even gun- 
shot wounds, in which the ball may remain inside the 
cavity of the head, are successfully dealt with, unless 
the injury produced by the ball has been necessarily 
fatal from the start. Fluhrer, of New York, has re- 
ported a very remarkable case of gun-shot wound, in 
which the ball entered at the forehead, traversed the 
entire brain, was deflected at the back of the skull, and 
then pursued its course farther downward in the brain. 
By trephining the skull at the back he found the ball, 
passed a rubber drainage tube through the entire brain 
from front to back, and had the satisfaction of seeing 
the patient recover. 

Until 1884 it was excessively difficult to locate with 
any degree of accuracy a tumor within the brain, but 
in that year Dr. Bennett, of London, for the first time 
accurately located a tumor within the skull without 
there being the slightest evidence on the exterior of its 
existence, much less of its location. Mr. Godlee (sur- 
geons in England are not called "Dr.," but "Mr.") tre- 
phined the skull at the point indicated, found the tumor, 
and removed it. True, this patient died, but the pos- 

251 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

sibility of accurately locating a tumor of the brain, 
reaching it and removing it, was now demonstrated, 
which is far more important to humanity at large than 
whether this individual patient survived or not. Since 
then there have been a very large number of tumors 
successfully removed. The latest statistics are those of 
Von Bergmann, of Berlin, in 1898. He collected 273 
operations for brain tumors, of which 169 (61.9 per cent.) 
recovered, and 104 (38.1 per cent.) died. This is by far 
the best percentage of results so far reported, but there 
is reason to believe that with the constant improvement 
in our ability to locate such tumors and in our methods 
of removing them, the mortality rate will be still further 
lessened. 

Even more successful than the surgery of brain tumors 
has been the surgery of abscess of the brain. I have no 
available statistics of the exact numbers, but it is certain 
that several hundred have been operated on, and with 
even better success than in the case of brain tumors. 
The most frequent cause for such abscesses is old and 
neglected disease of the ear. No child suffering from 
a "running from the ear," which is especially apt to 
follow scarlet fever and other similar disorders, should be 
allowed to pass from under the most skilled treatment 
until a cure is effected. This is the commonest cause 
of abscess of the brain. The inflammation in the ear, 
which begins in the soft lining of the cavities of the ear, 
finally extends to the bone, and after years of inter- 
mittent discharge, will suddenly develop an abscess of 
the brain, which, if not relieved, will certainly be fatal. 
Prompt surgical interference alone can save life, and, 
happily, though we cannot promise recovery in all, a 
very large percentage of success is assured. 

In epilepsy, as a result of injuries of the head, in a 
moderate number of cases, we can obtain a cure of the 
disease by operation, but in the great majority of cases, 

252 



SURGERY 

and, one may say, practically in all of the cases in which 
the epilepsy originates "of itself," that is to say, with- 
out any known cause, it is useless to operate, certainly 
at least after the epileptic habit has been formed. Pos- 
sibly were operation done at the very beginning we 
might obtain better results than experience thus far 
has shown us is possible. 

Very many cases of idiocy are constantly brought 
to surgeons in the hope that something can be done for 
these lamentable children. Unfortunately, at present 
surgery holds out but little hope in such cases. In a few 
exceptional instances it may be best to operate, but 
a prudent surgeon will decline to do any operation in 
the vast majority of cases. 

Surgery of the Chest and Heart. — The chest is the 
region of the body which has shown the least progress 
of all, and yet even here the progress is very marked. 
When, as a result of pleurisy, fluid accumulates on one 
side of the chest, even displacing the heart, we now do 
not hesitate to remove an inch or two of one or 
more ribs and thoroughly drain the cavity, with not 
only a reasonable, but in a majority of cases, one may 
almost say, a certain, prospect of cure. We have 
also entered upon the road which will lead us in time 
to a secure surgery of the lung itself. A few cases of 
abscess, of serious gun-shot wound, attended by other- 
wise fatal hemorrhage, and even of tubercular cavities 
in the lungs have been successfully dealt with, but 1he 
twentieth century will see, I have no doubt, brilliant 
results in thoracic surgery. 

One of the most striking injuries of the chest has re- 
cently assumed a new importance, viz., wounds of the 
heart itself. In several instances an opening has been 
made in the bony and muscular walls of the chest, and 
a wound of the heart itself has been sewed up. The 
number is as yet small, but there have been several re- 

253 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

coveries, which lead us to believe that here, too, the 
limits of surgery have by no means been reached. 

Surgery of the Abdomen. — Of the abdomen and the 
pelvis a very different story can be told. These cavities 
might almost be called the playground of the surgeon, 
and the remarkable results which have been obtained 
warrant us in believing that even greater results are 
in store for us in the future. 

In the earlier part of this article I spoke of the ad- 
vantages of the study of the pathological anatomy or 
the diseased condition of individual organs. Perhaps 
no better illustration of the value of this can be given 
than in the studies of appendicitis. This operation 
has been one of the contributions to the surges of the 
world in which America has been foremost. While 
there were one or two earlier papers, Willard Parker, 
of New York, in 1867, first made the profession listen 
to him when he urged that abscesses appearing above 
the right groin should be operated on and the patient's 
life saved. But it was not until Fitz, of Boston, in 1888, 
published his paper, in which he pointed out, as a result 
of a study of a series of post-mortem examinations of 
persons dying from such an abscess above the right 
groin, that the appendix was the seat of the trouble, 
that this so frequent disease was rightly understood 
and rightly treated. 

As a result of the facts gathered in his paper, the 
treatment was perfectly clear, not only that we ought 
to operate in cases of abscess, but that in the case of 
patients suffering from two or more attacks, and often 
from even one attack of appendicitis, the appendix 
should be removed to prevent such abscess. 

The mortality in cases in which such an abscess has 
formed is, perhaps, quite twenty or twenty-five per cent., 
whereas, if patients are operated on "in the interval," 
that is to say, between attacks, when the abdominal 

254 



SURGERY 

cavity is free from pus, the mortality is scarcely more than 
two or three per cent., and may be even less than that. 

Surgeons are often asked whether appendicitis is not 
a fad, and whether our grandfathers ever had appendi- 
citis, etc. As a matter of fact, in my early profession- 
al days, appendicitis was well known. It was called 
"localized peritonitis" or localized "abscess," but while 
the disease was very frequent, its relation to the appendix 
was not recognized until from his study of its pathology 
an American pointed it out. Even now European sur- 
geons, with a few exceptions, are not alive to the need 
for operation in such cases. 

There is little doubt that the great prevalence of grippe 
during the last few years has increased the number of 
cases of appendicitis, both of them being catarrhal con- 
ditions of the lining membrane of the same continuous 
tract of the lungs, the mouth, the stomach, and the in- 
testines. 

One of the most fatal accidents that can befall a patient 
is to have an ulcer of the stomach perforate so that the 
contents of the stomach escape into the general abdom- 
inal cavity. Until 1885 no one ventured to operate 
in such a case. In an inaugural dissertation by Tinker, 
of Philadelphia, two hundred and thirty-two cases of 
such perforating ulcers of the stomach were reported, of 
which one hundred and twenty-three recovered, a mor- 
tality of 48.81 per cent. In not a few of them, if prompt 
instead of late surgical help had been invoked, a very 
different result would have been reported. If no opera- 
tion had been done, the mortality would have been one 
hundred per cent. 

In cancer of the stomach itself we are able, as a rule, 
to make a positive diagnosis only when a perceptible 
tumor is found. By that time so many adhesions have 
formed, and the infection has involved the neighboring 
glands to such an extent, that it is impossible to remove 

255 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the tumor, but the statistics even here are not without 
encouragement, at least for comfort if not for life. In 
many cases the tumor has been removed and the stomach 
and intestine joined together by various devices, and 
the mortality, which is necessariry great, has been re- 
duced by Czerny to twelve per cent, and by Carle to 
seven per cent. Even the entire stomach has been re- 
moved in several cases, and recovery has followed in 
about one - half. Most of these patients, however, have 
died from a return of the disease. 

When, as a result of swallowing caustic lye or other 
similar substances, the gullet (the oesophagus) becomes 
contracted to such an extent that no food can be swal- 
lowed, we now establish an opening into the stomach 
through which a tube is inserted at meal-time, and the 
patient has his breakfast, dinner, and supper poured 
into his stomach through the tube. If the stricture 
of the oesophagus is from malignant disease, of course 
this only prolongs life by preventing a horrible death 
by starvation, but in cases in which it is non-malignant 
life is indefinitely prolonged. The mortality of such 
an operation is very small. 

By a freak of nature or by disease the stomach some- 
times is narrowed in the middle, forming what is called 
an "hour-glass stomach." In such a case we open the 
abdomen, make an opening into the two parts of the 
stomach and unite the two so that we re-establish the 
single cavity of the stomach. The mortality of the op- 
eration is very slight, eight per cent. Again, sometimes 
the stomach becomes unduly dilated, thus interfering 
seriously with its function. A number of surgeons in 
such cases have simply folded over the wall of the 
stomach upon itself and have sewed the two layers to- 
gether, taking a plait or "tuck" in the stomach wall, 
and have restored it to its normal capacity and function. 

One of the most important advances has been made 

256 



SURGERY 

in the treatment of gall stones. The bile in the gall 
bladder is in a state of quiescence, which is favorable 
to a deposit of crystals from the bile. These crystals 
become agglutinated together into larger or smaller 
solid masses called gall stones. Sometimes the number 
of these is very small, from one to four or five; some- 
times they accumulate in enormous numbers, several 
hundreds having been reported in a number of instances. 
When they are small they can escape through the duct 
of the gall bladder into the bowel and create no disturb- 
ance, but when they are large, so that they cannot make 
their escape, they not uncommonly are causes not only 
of serious discomfort and prolonged ill-health, but often 
prove fatal. Nowadays one of the safest operations 
of surgery is to open the abdomen and the gall bladder 
and remove this menace to life, and the great majority 
of such patients recover without any untoward symp- 
toms. Even large abscesses of the liver, and, what is 
still more extraordinary, large tumors of the liver, are now 
removed successfully. A year ago all of the reported 
cases of tumor of the liver were collected which had been 
operated from 1888 to 1898, seventy -six in all. The 
termination in two cases was unknown, but of the other 
seventy - four, sixty - three recovered and eleven died, a 
mortality of only 14.9 per cent. 

The surgery of the intestines by itself is a subject 
which could well occupy the entire space allowed to this 
article. I can only, in a very superficial way, outline 
what has been done. Hernia or rupture is a condi- 
tion in which through an opening in the abdominal 
wall a loop of the bowel escapes. If it can be re- 
placed and kept within the abdomen by a suitable truss 
this was the best we could do till within the last 
ten or fifteen years. The safety and the painlessness 
of modern surgery which have resulted from the intro- 
duction of anaesthesia and antisepsis are such that now 
R 257 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

no person suffering from such a hernia, unless for some 
special personal reason, should be allowed to rely upon 
a truss, which is always a more or less treacherous means 
of retaining the hernia. We operate on all such cases 
now with impunity. Coley has recently reported a se- 
ries of six hundred and thirty-nine cases, all of which 
recovered with the exception of one patient. Even in 
children, if a truss worn for a reasonable time, a year or 
so, does not cure the rupture, operation affords an admi- 
rable prospect of cure. 

Every now and then a band forms inside the abdo- 
men, stretching like a string across the cavity. If 
a loop of bowel slips under such a band, it can be easily 
understood that total arrest of the intestinal contents 
ensues, a condition incompatible with life. There are 
other causes for such "intestinal obstruction," which 
are too technical to be described in detail, but this may 
be taken as a type of all. It is impossible, of course, to 
tell before opening the abdomen precisely the cause of 
the obstruction, but the fact is quickly determined in 
most cases. If we open the abdomen promptly, we can 
cut such a band or remove the other causes of obstruc- 
tion in the majority of cases, and if the operation has 
not been too long delayed, the prospect of entire recov- 
ery is good. The mortality which has followed such 
operations has been considerable, and by that I mean, 
say, over twenty per cent., but a very large number of the 
fatal cases have been lost because the operation has been 
delayed. In fact, it may be stated very positively that 
the mere opening of the abdomen to find out precisely 
the nature of any disease or injury is attended with but 
little danger. If further surgical interference is required, 
the danger will be increased proportionately to the ex- 
tent and gravity of such interference. But "explora- 
tory operations," as we call them, are now undertaken 
constantly with almost uniform success. 

258 



SURGERY 

Even in cancer of the bowel, we can prolong life, if we 
cannot save it. Cancer of the bowel sooner or later pro- 
duces "obstruction" and so destroys life, but in such 
cases we can either make a permanent opening in the 
bowel above the cancer, and so relieve the constant pain 
and distress which is caused by the obstruction, or, in a 
great many cases, we make an opening in the bowel 
above the cancer, and another below it, and, by uniting 
the two openings, if I may so express it, "side-track" 
the contents of the bowel. If the cancer has no adhesions 
and the patient's condition allows of it, we can cut out 
the entire portion of the bowel containing the cancer, 
unite the two ends, and thus re-establish the continuity 
of the intestinal canal. As much as eight feet, nearly 
one-third of the entire length of the bowel, have been re- 
moved by Shepherd, of Montreal, and yet the patient re- 
covered and lived a healthy life. 

Similarly in gun-shot wounds, stab wounds, etc., in- 
volving the intestine, the modern surgeon does not sim- 
ply stand by with folded hands and give opium and 
morphine to make the patient's last few hours or days 
relatively comfortable, but he opens the abdomen, finds 
the various perforations, closes them, and recovery has 
followed even in cases in which as many as seventeen 
wounds of the intestine have been produced by a gun- 
shot wound. 

The kidney, until thirty years ago, was deemed al- 
most beyond our reach, but now entire volumes have been 
written on the surgery of the kidney, and it is, one might 
say, a frequent occurrence to see the kidney exposed, 
sewed fast if it is loose, opened to remove a stone in its 
interior, drained if there be an abscess, or, if it be hope- 
lessly diseased, it is removed in its entirety. The other 
kidney, if not diseased, becomes equal to the work of 
both. 

Of the pelvic organs, it would not be becoming to speak 

259 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

in detail, but one operation I can scarcely omit : namely, 
ovariotomy. One of my old teachers was Washington 
L. Atlee, who, with his brother, was among the first 
ovariotomists in this country who placed the operation 
on a firm foundation. I heard a very distinguished 
physician in 1862, in a lecture to his medical class, de- 
nounce such men as " murderers " ; but to-day how differ- 
ently does the entire profession look upon the operation ! 
Instead of condemning the surgeon because he did re- 
move such a tumor, the profession would condemn him 
because he did not remove it. The operation had its 
rise in America. Ephraim McDowell, of Kentucky, in 
1809, first did the operation which now reflects so much 
credit upon modern surgery. The mortality of the 
Atlees was about one in three. Now, owing to the im- 
mense improvement introduced by the antiseptic meth- 
ods, the deaths, in competent hands, are not over five per 
cent., or even three per cent. 

The limits of this article compel me to stop with the 
story very imperfectly told, but yet, perhaps, it has been 
sufficient in detail to show somewhat of the astonishing 
progress of surgery within the century, but especially 
within the last quarter of the century. 

About two decades ago one of the foremost surgeons 
of London, Mr. Erichsen, said, in a public address, that 
"surgery had reached its limits." How short was his 
vision is shown by the fact that surgery at that time was 
just at the beginning of its most brilliant modern chapter. 

We have reached, in many respects, apparently, the 
limits of our success, but just as anaesthesia and anti- 
sepsis and the Rontgen rays have opened new fields 
wholly unsuspected until they were proclaimed, so I 
have no doubt that the twentieth century will see means 
and methods devised which will put to shame the surgery 
of to-day as much as the surgery of to-day puts to shame 
that of thirty years ago, and still more of a century ago. 

260 



SURGERY 

The methods by which this will be attained will be by the 
more thorough and systematic study of disease and injury, 
so as to better our means of diagnosis, and so prepare us 
for immediate surgical interference, instead of delaying 
it, as we now do in many cases, for want of certain knowl- 
edge; by the use of new chemical and pharmaceutical 
means to perfect our antisepsis and possibly to introduce 
other methods of treatment; but, above all, we shall 
obtain progress by the exact experimental methods of 
the laboratory. We can never make progress except by 
trying new methods. New methods must be tried either 
on man or on animals, and as the former is not allowable, 
the only wa}" remaining to us is to test all new methods, 
drugs, and applications first upon animals. He who re- 
stricts, and, still more, he who would abolish our pres- 
ent experiments upon animals, is, in my opinion, the 
worst foe to the human race, and to animals, as well, for 
they, as well as human beings, obtain the benefit derived 
from the method. He may prate of his humanity, but 
he is the most cruel man alive. 

W. W. Keen. 



ELECTRICITY 






ELECTRICITY 



'"THE great importance which electricity has attained 
* in many departments of human activity is so con- 
stantly evident that we have difficulty in realizing how 
short is the time which has been occupied in its devel- 
opment. The latter half of the nineteenth centum must 
ever remain memorable, not only for the great advances 
in nearly all the useful arts, but for the peculiarly rapid 
electric progress, and the profound effect which it has 
had upon the lives and business of the people. In the 
preceding century we find no evidences of the application 
of electricity to any useful purpose. Few of the more 
important principles of the science were then known. 
Franklin's invention of the lightning-rod was not in- 
tended to utilize electric force, but to guard life and prop- 
erty from the perils of the thunder-storm. The numer- 
ous instructive experiments in frictional electricity, 
the first -known form of electric manifestation except 
lightning, made clear certain principles, such as con- 
duction and insulation, and served to distinguish the 
two opposite electric conditions known as positive and 
negative. Franklin's kite experiment confirmed the 
long-suspected identity of lightning and electric sparks. 
It was not, however, until the discovery by Alexander 
Volta, in 1799, of his pile, or battery, that electricity 
could take its place as an agent of practical value. Volta, 
when he made this great discovery, was following the 
work of Galvani, begun in 1786. But Galvani in his 
experiments mistook the effect for the cause, and so 

265 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

missed making the unique demonstration that two dif- 
ferent metals immersed in a solution could set up an 
electric current. Volta, a professor in the University 
of Pavia and a foreign member of the Royal Society 
of England, communicated his discovery to the presi- 
dent of the society in March, 1800, and brought to the 
notice of the world the first means for obtaining a steady 
flow of electricity. Before this event electric energy 
had been known to the experimenter in pretty effects 
of attraction and repulsion of light objects, in fitful 
flashes of insignificant power, or, as it appeared in nat- 
ure, in the fearful bursts of energy during a thunder- 
storm, uncontrolled and erratic. The analogous and 
closely related phenomena of magnetism had already 
found an important application in the navigator's com- 
pass. 

The simplest facts of electro-magnetism, upon which 
much of the later electrical developments depend, re- 
mained entirely unknown until near the close of the 
first quarter of the nineteenth century. Magnetism 
itself, as exemplified in loadstone or in magnetized iron 
or steel, had long before been consistently studied by 
Dr. Gilbert, of Colchester, England, and in 1600 his 
great work, De Magneie, was published. It is a first 
example, and an excellent one, too, of the application 
of the inductive method, so fruitful in after-years. The 
restraints which a superstitious age had imposed upon 
nature study were gradually removed, and at the be- 
ginning of the century just past occasional decided 
encouragement began to be given to physical research. 
It was this condition which put into the hands of Hum- 
phry Davy, of the Royal Institution, in London, at 
the opening of the century, a voltaic battery of some 
250 pairs of plates. With this a remarkably fruitful 
era of electric discovery began. In 1802 Davy first 
showed the electric arc or "arch" on a small scale be- 

266 



ELECTRICITY 

tween pieces of carbon. He also laid the foundation 
for future electro-chemical work by decomposing by 
the battery current potash and soda, and thus isolating 
the alkali metals, potassium and sodium, for the first 
time. This was in 1807, and the result was not only 
to greatly advance the youthful science of chemistry, 
but to attract the attention of the world to a new power 
in the hands of the scientific worker, electric current. 
A fund was soon subscribed by "a few zealous culti- 
vators and patrons of science," interested in the discovery 
of Davy, and he had at his service in 1801 no less than 
2000 cells of voltaic battery. With the intense currents 
obtained from it he again demonstrated the wonderful 
and brilliant phenomenon of the electric arc, by first 
closing the circuit of the battery through terminals of 
hardwood charcoal and then separating them for a short 
distance. A magnificent arch of flame was maintained 
between the separated ends, and the light from the char- 
coal pieces was of dazzling splendor. Thus was born 
into the world the electric arc light, of which there are 
now many hundreds of thousands burning nightly in 
our own country alone. 

Davy probably never imagined that his brilliant ex- 
periment would soon play so important a part in the 
future lighting of the world. He may never have re- 
garded it as of any practical value. In fact, many 
years elapsed before any further attempt was made to 
utilize the light of the electric arc. The reason for this 
is not difficult to discover. The batteries in existence 
were crude and gave only their full power for a very 
short time after the circuit was closed. They were 
subject to the very serious defect of rapid polarization, 
whereby the activity was at once reduced. A long 
period elapsed before this defect was removed. Davy 
in his experiments had also noted the very intense heat 
of the electric arc, and found that but few substances 

267 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

escaped fusion or volatilization when placed in the heated 
stream between the carbon electrodes. Here again he 
was pioneer in very important and quite recent electric 
work, employing the electric furnace, which has already 
given rise to several new and valuable industries. 

The conduction of electricity along wires naturally 
led to efforts to employ it in signalling. As early as 
1774 attempts were made by Le Sage, of Geneva, to 
apply frictional electricity to telegraphy. His work 
was followed before the close of the century by other 
similar proposals. Volta's discovery soon gave a re- 
newed impetus to these efforts. It was easy enough 
to stop and start a current in a line of wire connecting 
two points, but something more than that was requisite. 
A good receiver, or means for recognizing the presence 
or absence of current in the wire or circuit, did not exist. 
The art had to wait for the discovery of the effects of 
electric current upon magnets and the production of 
magnetism by such currents. Curiously, even in 1802 
the fact that a wire conveying a current would deflect 
a compass needle was observed bj? Romagnosi, of Trente, 
but it was afterwards forgotten, and not until 1 81 9 was 
any real advance made. 

It was then that Oersted, of Copenhagen, showed 
that a magnet tends to set itself at right angles to the 
wire conveying current and that the direction of turning 
depends on the direction of the current. The study 
of the magnetic effects of electric currents by Arago, 
Ampere, and the production of the electro-magnet by 
Sturgeon, together with the very valuable work of Henry 
and others, made possible the completion of the electric 
telegraph. This was done by Morse and Vail in America, 
and almost simultaneously by workers abroad, but, be- 
fore Morse had entered the field, Professor Joseph Henry 
had exemplified by experiments the working of electric 
signalling by electro-magnets over a short line. It 

268 



ELECTRICITY 

was Henry, in fact, who first made a practically useful 
electro-magnet of soft iron. The history of the electric 
telegraph teaches us that to no single individual is the 
invention due. The Morse system had been demonstrated 
in 1837, but not until 1844 was the first telegraph line 
built. It connected Baltimore and Washington, and the 
funds for defraying its cost were only obtained from 
Congress after a severe struggle. This can easily be 
understood, for electricity had not up to that time ever 
been shown to have any practical usefulness. The 
success of the Morse telegraph was soon followed b}' 
the establishment of telegraph lines as a means of com- 
munication between all the large cities and populous 
districts. Scarcely ten years elapsed before the pos- 
sibility of a transatlantic telegraph was mooted. The 
cable laid in 1858 was a failure. A few words passed, 
and then the cable broke down completely. This was 
found to be due to defects in construction. A renewed 
effort to lay a cable was made in 1866, but disappoint- 
ment again followed : the cable broke in mid-ocean 
and the work again ceased. The great task was suc- 
cessfully accomplished in the following year, and the 
pluck and pertinacity of those who were staking their 
capital, if not their reputations for business sagacity, 
were amply rewarded. Even the lost cable of 1866 was 
found, spliced to a new cable, and completed soon after 
as a second working line. The delicate instruments 
for the working of these long cables were due to the 
genius of Sir William Thomson, now Lord Kelvin, 
whose other instruments for electrical measurement 
have for years been a great factor in securing precision 
both in scientific and practical testing. The number 
of cables joining the Eastern and Western hemispheres 
has been increased from time to time, and the opening of 
a new cable is now an ordinary occurrence, calling for 
little or no especial note. 

269 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

The introduction of the electric telegraph was followed 
by the invention of various signalling systems, the 
most important being the fire-alarm telegraph, as sug- 
gested by Channing and worked out by Farmer. We 
now, also, have automatic clock systems, in which a 
master clock controls or gives movement to the hands 
of distant clock dials by electric currents sent out over 
the connecting or circuit wires. Automatic electric 
signals are made when fire breaks out in a building, 
and alarms are similarly rung when a burglar breaks 
in. Not only do we have telegraphs which print words 
and characters, as in the stock "ticker," but in the form 
known as the telautograph, invented by Dr. Elisha 
Gray, the sender writes his message, which writing is 
at the same time being reproduced at the receiving end 
of the line. Even pictures for drawings are "wired" 
by special instruments. The desirability of making one 
wire connecting two points do a large amount of work, 
and thus avoiding the addition of new lines, has led 
to two remarkable developments of telegraphy. In 
the duplex, quadruplex, and multiplex systems several 
messages may at the same time be traversing a single 
wire line without interference one with the other. In 
the rapid automatic systems the working capacity of 
the line is increased by special automatic transmitting 
machines and rapid recorders, and the electric impulses 
in the line itself follow each other with great speed. 

Improvement in this field has by no means ceased, 
and new systems for rapid transmission are yet being 
worked out. The object is to enlarge the carrying capac- 
ity of existing lines connecting large centres of popula- 
tion. The names of Wheatstone, Stearns, Edison, and 
Delaney are prominent in connection with this work. 
For use in telegraphy the originally crude forms of 
voltaic battery, such as Davy used, were replaced by 
the more perfect types such as the constant battery of 

270 



ELECTRICITY 

Daniell, the nitric -acid battery of Grove, dating from 
1836, and the carbon battery of Bunsen, first brought 
out in 1842. Such was the power of the Grove and 
Bunsen batteries that attention was again called to the 
electric arc and to the possibility of its use for electric 
illumination. Accordingly, we find that suggestions 
were soon made for electric-arc lamps, to be operated 
by these more powerful and constant sources of electric 
current. The first example of a working type of an 
arc lamp was that brought to notice by W. E. Staite, 
in 1847, and his description of the lamp and the con- 
ditions under which it could be worked is a remarkably 
exact and full statement, considering the time of its 
appearance. Staite even anticipated the most recent 
phase of development in arc lighting, namely, the en- 
closure of the light in a partial^ air-tight globe, to pre- 
vent too rapid waste of the carbons by combustion in 
the air. In a public address at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
in 1847, he advocated the use of the arc, so enclosed, 
in mines, as obviating the danger of fire. But it was 
a long time before the electric arc acquired any impor- 
tance as a practical illuminant. There was, indeed, 
no hope of its success so long as the current had to be 
obtained from batteries consuming chemicals and zinc. 
The expense was too great, and the batteries soon be- 
came exhausted. In spite of this fact, occasional ex- 
hibitions of arc lighting were made, notably in 1856, 
by Lacassagne and Thiers, in the streets of Paris. 

For this service they had invented an arc lamp in- 
volving what is known as the differential principle, 
afterwards applied so extensively to arc lamps. The 
length of the arc or the distance between the carbons 
of the lamp was controlled with great nicety, and the 
light thus rendered very steady. Even as late as 1875 
batteries were occasionally used to work single electric 
arc lamps for public exhibitions, or for demonstration 

271 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

purposes in the scientific departments of schools. The 
discovery of the means of efficiently generating elec- 
tricity from mechanical power constitutes, however, 
the key-note of all the wonderful electrical work of the 
closing years of the nineteenth century. It made elec- 
trical energy available at low cost. Michael Farada}^, 
a most worthy successor of Davy at the Royal Institu- 
tion, in studying the relations between electric cur- 
rents and magnets, made the exceedingly important 
observation that a wire, if moved in the field of a magnet, 
would yield a current of electricity. Simple as the dis- 
covery was, its effect has been stupendous. Follow- 
ing his science for its own sake, he unwittingly opened 
up possibilities of the greatest practical moment. The 
fundamental principle of the future dynamo electric 
machine was discovered by him. This was in 1831. 
Faraday's investigations were so complete and his 
deductions so masterly, that little was left to be done 
by others. Electro - magnetism was supplemented by 
magneto-electricity. Both the electric motor and the 
dynamo generator were now potentially present with us. 
Faraday contented himself with pointing the way, leav- 
ing the technical engineer to follow. In one of Fara- 
day's experiments a copper disk mounted on an axis 
passing through its centre was revolved between the 
poles of a large steel magnet. A wire touched the pe- 
riphery of the disk at a selected position with respect to 
the magnet, and another was in connection with the 
axis. These wires were united through a galvanom- 
eter or instrument for detecting electric current. A cur- 
rent was noted as present in the circuit so long as 
the disk was turned. Here, then, was the embryo dy- 
namo. The century closed with single dynamo ma- 
chines of over 5000 horse-power capacity, and with sin- 
gle power stations in which the total electric genera- 
tion by such machines is 75,000 to 100,000 horse-power. 

272 



ELECTRICITY 

So perfect is the modern dynamo that out of iooo horse- 
power expended in driving it, 950 or more may be de- 
livered to the electric line as electric energy. The electric 
motor, now so common, is a machine like the dynamo, 
in which the principle of action is simply reversed; 
electric energy delivered from the lines becomes again 
mechanical motion or power. 

Soon after Faraday's discoveries in magneto-electric- 
ity attempts were made to construct generators of elec- 
tricity from power. But the machines were small, crude, 
and imperfect, and the results necessarily meagre. 

Pixii, in Paris, one year after Faraday's discovery 
was announced, made a machine which embodied in 
its construction a simple commutator for giving the 
currents a single direction of flow. This is the prototype 
of the commutators now found on what are called con- 
tinuous-current dynamos. After Pixii followed Saxton, 
Clarke, Wheatstone and Cooke, Estohrer, and others, 
but not until 1854 was any very notable improvement 
made or suggested. In that year Soren Hjorth, of Copen- 
hagen, described in a patent specification the principle 
of causing the electric currents generated to traverse 
coils of wire so disposed as to reinforce the magnetic 
field of the machine itself. A year subsequently the 
same idea was again more clearly set out by Hjorth. 
This is the principle of the modern self-exciting dynamo, 
the field magnets of which, very weak at the start, are 
built up or strengthened by the currents from the arma- 
ture or revolving part of the machine in which power 
is consumed to produce electricity. 

In 1856 Dr. Werner Siemens, of Berlin, well known 
as a great pioneer in the electric arts, brought out the 
Siemens armature, an innovation more valuable than 
any other made up to that time. This was subsequently 
used in the powerful machines of Wilde and Ladd. It 
still survives in magneto call-bell apparatus for such work 
S 273 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

as telephone signalling, in exploders for mines and blast- 
ing, and in the simpler types of electroplating dynamos. 

The decade between i860 and 1870 opened a new era 
in the construction and working of dynamo machines 
and motors. It is notable for two advances of very great 
value and importance. Dr. Paccinotti, of Florence, in 
i860, described a machine by which true continuous 
currents resembling battery currents could be obtained. 
Up to that time machines gave either rapidly alternating 
or fluctuating currents, not steady currents in one direc- 
tion. The Paccinotti construction, in modified forms, 
is now almost universally employed in dynamo ma- 
chines, and even where the form is now quite different 
the Paccinotti type has been at least the forerunner, 
and has undergone modifications to suit special ends 
in view. Briefly, Paccinotti made his armature of a 
ring of iron with iron projections between which the 
coils of insulated wire were wound. Although full 
descriptions of Paccinotti's ring armature and com- 
mutator were given out in 1864, his work attracted but 
little attention until Gramme, in Paris, about 1870, 
brought out the relatively perfect Gramme machine. 
In the mean time the other great development of the 
decade took place. 

Although Hjorth had, as stated before, put forward 
the idea that a dynamo generator might itself furnish 
currents for magnetizing its own magnets, this valuable 
suggestion was not apparently worked out until 1866, 
when a machine was constructed for Sir Charles Wheat- 
stone. This appears to have been the first self-exciting 
machine in existence. Wheatstone read a paper before 
the Royal Society in February, 1867, " On the Augmen- 
tation of the Power of a Magnet by the Reaction thereon 
of Currents Induced by the Magnet Itself/' This action 
later became known as the reaction principle in dynamo 
machines. 

274 



ELECTRICITY 

As often happens, the idea occurred to other workers 
in science almost simultaneously, and Dr. Werner Sie- 
mens also read a paper in Berlin about a month earlier 
than that of Wheatstone, clearly describing the reaction 
principle. Furthermore, a patent specification had been 
filed in the British Patent Office by S. A. Varley, De- 
cember 24, 1866, clearly showing the same principle of 
action, and he was, therefore, the first to put the matter 
on record. The time was ripe for the appearance of ma- 
chines closely resembling the types now in such ex- 
tended use. Gramme, in 1870, adopting a modified 
form of the Paccinotti ring and commutator, and em- 
ploying the reaction principle, first succeeded in produc- 
ing a highly efficient, compact, and durable continuous- 
current dynamo. The Gramme machine was immediate- 
ly recognized as a great technical triumph. It was in 
a sense the culmination of many years of development, 
beginning with the early attempts immediately follow- 
ing Faraday's discovery, already referred to. Gramme 
constructed his revolving armature of a soft iron wire 
ring, upon which ring a series of small coils of insulated 
wire were wound in successive radial planes. These 
coils were all connected with a continuous wire and 
from the junctions of the coils one with another connec- 
tions were taken to a range of copper bars insulated 
from each other, constituting the commutator. In 1872 
Von Hefner Alteneck, in Berlin, modified the ring wind- 
ing of Gramme and produced the "drum winding," 
which avoided the necessity for threading wire through 
the centre of the iron ring as in the Gramme construc- 
tion. The several coils of the drum were still connected, 
as in Gramme's machine, to the successive strips of the 
commutator. 

In modern dynamos and motors the armature, usually 
constructed of sheet-iron punchings, is a ring with pro- 
jections as in Paccinotti's machine, and the coils of wire 

275 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

are in most cases wound separately and then placed 
in the spaces between the projections, constituting in 
fact a form of drum winding. In the early 7o's a few 
Gramme ring and Siemens drum machines had been 
applied to the running of arc lights, one machine for 
each light. There were also some Gramme machines 
in use for electroplating. 

At the Centennial Exhibition, held at Philadelphia 
in 1876, but two exhibits of electric-lighting apparatus 
were to be found. Of these one was the Gramme and 
the other the Wallace-Farmer exhibit. The Wallace- 
Farmer dynamo machine is a type now obsolete. It 
was not a good design, but the Wallace exhibit con- 
tained other examples reflecting great credit on this 
American pioneer in dynamo work. Some of these 
machines were very similar in construction to later 
forms which went into very extensive use. The large 
search-lights occasionally used in night illumination 
during the exhibitions were operated by the current 
from Wallace-Farmer machines. The Gramme exhibit 
was a remarkable exhibit for its time. Though not 
extensive, it was most instructive. There were found in 
it a dynamo running an arc lamp; a large machine 
for electrolytic work, such as electroplating or elec- 
trotyping, and, most novel and interesting of all, 
one Gramme machine driven by power was connected 
to another by a pair of wires and the second run as 
a motor. This in turn drove a centrifugal-pump, and 
raised water which flowed in a small fall or cataract. 
A year or two previously the Gramme machine had 
been accidentally found to be as excellent an electric 
motor as it was a generating dynamo. The crude 
motors of Jacobi, Froment, Davenport, Page, Vergnes, 
Gaume, and many others, were thus rendered obso- 
lete at a stroke. The first public demonstration of 
the working of one Gramme machine by another 

276 



ELECTRICITY 

was made by Fontaine at the Vienna Exhibition of 
1873. 

Here, then, was a foreshadowing of the great electric- 
power transmission plants of to-day; the suggestion of 
the electric station furnishing power as well as light, and, 
to a less degree, the promise of future railways using 
electric power. Replace the centrifugal pump of this 
modest exhibit by a turbine wheel, reverse the flow of 
water so as to cause it to drive the electric motor so that 
the machine becomes a dynamo, and, in like manner, 
make of the dynamo a motor, and we exemplify in a sim- 
ple way recent great enterprises using water-power for 
the generation of current to be transmitted over lines to 
distant electric motors or lights. 

The Centennial Exhibition also marks the beginning 
— the very birth, it may be said — of an electric invention 
destined to become, before the close of the century, a 
most potent factor in human affairs. The speaking tel- 
ephone of Alexander Graham Bell was there exhibited 
for the first time to the savants, among whom was 
the distinguished electrician and scientist Sir William 
Thomson. For the first time in the history of the world 
a structure of copper wire and iron spoke to a listening 
ear. Nay, more, it both listened to the voice of the speak- 
er and repeated the voice at a far-distant point. The 
instruments were, moreover, the acme of simplicity. 
Within a year many a boy had constructed a pair of tele- 
phones at an expenditure for material of only a few pen- 
nies. In its first form the transmitting telephone was 
the counterpart of the receiver, and they were reversible 
in function. The transmitter was in reality a minute 
dynamo driven by the aerial voice waves; the receiver, 
a vibratory motor worked by the vibratory currents 
from the transmitter and reproducing the aerial motions. 
This arrangement, most beautiful in theory, was only 
suited for use on short lines, and was soon afterwards 

277 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

replaced by various forms of carbon microphone trans- 
mitter, to the production of which many inventors had 
turned their attention, notably Edison, Hughes, Blake, 
and Hunnings. In modern transmitters the voice wave 
does not furnish the power to generate the telephone cur- 
rent, but only controls the flow of an already existing 
current from a battery. In this way the effects obtain- 
able may be made sufficiently powerful for transmission 
to listeners 1500 miles away. 

There is no need to dwell here upon the enormous 
saving of time secured by the telephone and the profound 
effect its introduction has had upon business and social 
life. The situation is too palpable. Nevertheless, few 
users of this wonderful invention realize how much 
thought and skill have been employed in working out 
the details of exchange switchboards, of signalling de- 
vices, of underground cables and overhead wires, and 
of the speaking instruments themselves. Few of those 
who talk between Boston and Chicago know that in do- 
ing so they have for the exclusive use of their voices a 
total of over 1,000,000 pounds of copper wire in the single 
line. There probably now exist in the United States 
alone between 75,000 and 100,000 miles of hard-drawn 
copper wire for long-distance telephone service, and over 
150,000 miles of wire in underground conduits. There 
are upward of three-quarters of a million telephones in 
the United States, and, including both overhead and 
underground lines, a total of more than half a million 
milts of wire. Approximately one thousand million 
conversations are annually conveyed. 

The possibility of sub-oceanic telephoning is frequent- 
ly discussed, but the problem thus far is not solved. It 
involves grave difficulties, and we may hope that its 
solution is to be one of the advances which will mark the 
twentieth century's progress. 

The advent of the telephone in 1876 seemed to stimu- 

278 



ELECTRICITY 

late invention in the electric field to a remarkable degree. 
Its immediate commercial success probably acted also 
to inspire confidence in other proposed electric enter- 
prises. Greater attention than ever before began to be 
given to the problem of electric lighting. An electric 
arc lamp, probably the only one in regular use, had been 
installed at Dungeness Light-house in 1862, after a long 
set of trials and tests. It was fed by a Holmes magneto- 
electric machine of the old type, very large and cumbrous 
for the work. Numerous changes and improvements 
had before 1878 been made in arc lamps by Serrin, Du- 
boscq, and many others. But the display of electric 
light during the Paris Exposition of 1878 was the first 
memorable use of the electric light on a large scale. The 
splendid illumination of the Avenue de l'Opera was a 
grand object-lesson. The source of light was the " elec- 
tric candle" of Paul Jablochkoff, a Russian engineer. 
It was a strikingly original and simple arc lamp. In- 
stead of placing the two carbons point to point, as had 
been done in nearly all previous lamps, he placed them 
side by side, with a strip of baked kaolin between them. 
The candle so formed was supported in a suitable holder, 
whereby, at the lower end, the two parallel carbons were 
connected with the circuit terminals. By a suitable de- 
vice the arc was started at the top and burned down. 
The electric candle seemed to solve the problem of al- 
lowing complicated mechanism for feeding the carbons 
to be discarded ; but it survived only a short time. Owing 
to unforeseen difficulties it was gradually abandoned, 
after having served a great purpose in directing the at- 
tention of the world to the possibilities of the electric arc 
in lighting. 

Inventors in America were not idle. By the close of 
1878, Brush, of Cleveland, had brought out his series 
system of arc lights, including special dynamos, lamps, 
etc., and by the middle of 1879 had in operation machines 

279 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

each capable of maintaining sixteen arc lamps on one 
wire. This was, indeed, a great achievement for that 
time. Weston, of Newark, had also in operation circuits 
of arc lamps, and the Thomson-Houston system had 
just started in commercial work with eight arc lamps in 
series from a single dynamo. Maxim and Fuller, in New 
York, were working arc lamps from their machines, and 
capital was being rapidly invested in new enterprises 
for electric lighting. Some of the great electric manu- 
facturing concerns of to-day had their beginning at that 
time. Central lighting stations began to be established 
in cities, and the use of arc lights in street illumination 
and in stores grew rapidly. More perfect forms of arc 
lamps were invented, better generating dynamos and 
regulating apparatus brought out. Factories for arc- 
light carbon making were built. The first special elec- 
trical exhibition was held in Paris in 1881. In the early 
8o's, also, the business of arc lighting had become firmly 
established, and soon the bulk of the work was done 
under two of the leading systems. These were afterwards 
brought together under one control, thus securing in the 
apparatus manufactured a combination of the good 
features of both. Until about 1892 nearly all the arc 
lamps in use were worked under the series system, in 
which the lights are connected one after another on a 
circuit and traversed by the same current. This cur- 
rent has a standard value, or is a constant current. Some- 
times as many as a hundred lamps were on one wire. As 
the mains for the supply of incandescent lamps at con- 
stant pressure, or potential, were extended, attention 
was more strongly turned to the possibility of working 
arc lights therefrom. 

Within a few years of the close of the century this 
placing of arc lamps in branches from the same mains 
which supply incandescent lamps became common, and 
the enclosure of the arc in a partially air-tight globe, a 

280 



ELECTRICITY 

procedure advocated by Staite, in 1847, was revived by 
Howard, Marks, and others for saving carbons and at- 
tention to the lamp. The enclosed arc lamp was also 
found to be especially adapted to use in branches of the 
incandescent lamp circuits, which had in cities become 
greatly extended. The increasing emplojanent of al- 
ternating currents in the distribution of electric energy 
has led also to the use of alternating current arc lamps, 
and special current-regulating apparatus is now being 
applied on a large scale to extended circuits of these 
lamps. It can be seen from these facts that the art is 
still rapidly progressing and the field ever widening. A 
little over twenty years ago practically no arc lamps were 
used. At the close of the century, they were num- 
bered by hundreds of thousands. The annual con- 
sumption of carbons in this country has reached two 
hundred millions. 

Almost simultaneously with the beginning of the com- 
mercial work of arc lighting, Edison, in a successful 
effort to provide a small electric lamp for general distri- 
bution in place of gas, brought to public notice his car- 
bon filament incandescent lamp. 

A considerable amount of progress had previously 
been made by various workers in attempting to reduce 
the volume of light in each lamp and increase the num- 
ber of lights for a given power expended. Forms of in- 
candescent arc lamps, or semi-incandescent lamps, were 
tried on a considerable scale abroad, but none have sur- 
vived. So, also, many attempts to produce a lamp giv- 
ing light by pure incandescence of solid conductors 
proved for the most part abortive. Edison himself 
worked for nearly two years on a lamp based upon the 
old idea of incandescent platinum strips or wires, but 
without success. The announcement of this lamp 
caused a heavy drop in gas shares, long before the prob- 
lem was really solved by a masterly stroke in his carbon 

281 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

filament lamp. Curiously, the nearest approach to the 
carbon filament lamp had been made in 1845, by Starr, 
an American, who described in a British patent speci- 
fication a lamp in which electric current passed through 
a thin strip of carbon kept it heated while surrounded by 
a glass bulb in which a vacuum was maintained. Starr 
had exhibited his lamps to Faraday, in England, and 
was preparing to construct dynamos to furnish electric 
current for them in place of batteries, but sudden death 
put an end to his labors. The specification describing 
his lamp is perhaps the earliest description of an incan- 
descent lamp of any promise, and the subsequently re- 
corded ideas of inventors up to the work of Edison seem 
now to be almost in the nature of retrograde movements. 
None of them were successful commercially. Starr, 
who was only twenty-five years of age, is reported to 
have died of overwork and worry in his efforts to perfect 
his invention. His ideas were evidently far in advance 
of his time. 

The Edison lamp differed from those which preceded 
it in the extremely small section of the carbon strip ren- 
dered hot by the current, and in the perfection of the vac- 
uum in which it was mounted. The filament was first 
made of carbonized paper, and afterwards of bamboo car- 
bon. The modern incandescent lamp has for years past 
been provided with a filament made by a chemical process. 
The carbon formed is exceedingly homogeneous and of 
uniform electric resistance. Edison first exhibited his 
lamp in his laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 
December, 1879; but before it could be properly utilized 
an enormous amount of work had to be done. His task 
was not merely the improvement of an art already ex- 
isting ; it was the creation of a new art. Special dy- 
namo machines had to be invented and constructed for 
working the lamps ; switches were needed for connecting 
and disconnecting lamps and groups of lamps; meters 

282 



ELECTRICITY 

for measuring the consumption of electric energy were 
wanted ; safety fuses and cut-offs had to be provided ; 
electroliers or fixtures to support the lamp were required ; 
and, lastly, a complete system of underground mains 
with appurtenances was a requisite for city plants. 

Even the steam-engines for driving the dynamos 
had to be remodelled and improved for electric work, 
and ten years of electric lighting development did more 
towards the refinement and perfection of steam-engines 
than fifty years preceding. Steadiness of lights meant 
the preservation of steady speed in the driving machinery. 
The Pearl Street station in New York City was the first 
installation for the supply of current for incandescent 
lighting in a city district. The constant pressure dyna- 
mos were gradually improved and enlarged. The de- 
tails of all parts of the system were made more perfect, 
and in the hands of Edison and others the incandescent 
lamps, originally of high cost, were much cheapened 
and the quality of the production was greatly improved. 
Lamps originally cost one dollar each. The best lamps 
that are made can be had at present for about one-fifth 
that price. Millions of incandescent lamps are annually 
manufactured. Great lighting stations furnish the cur- 
rent for the working of these lamps, some stations contain- 
ing machinery aggregating many thousands of horse- 
power capacity. Not only do these stations furnish 
electric energy for the working of arc lamps and in- 
candescent lamps, but, in addition, for innumerable mo- 
tors ranging in size from the small desk fan of one-tenth 
horse-power up to those of hundreds of horse-power. 
The larger sizes replace steam or hydraulic power for 
elevators, and many are used in shops and factories 
for driving machinery such as printing-presses, ma- 
chinery tools, and the like. 

In spite of the fact that it was well known that a good 
dynamo when reversed could be made a source of power, 

283 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

few electric motors were in use until a considerable time 
after the establishment of the first lighting stations. 
Even in 1884, at the Philadelphia Electrical Exhibi- 
tion, only a few electric motors were shown. Not until 
1886 or thereafter did the "motor load" of an electric 
station begin to be a factor in its business success. The 
motors supplied are an advantageous adjunct, inasmuch 
as they provide a day load, increasing the output of the 
station at a time when the lighting load is small and 
when the machinery in consequence would, without 
them, have remained idle. The growth of the applica- 
tion of electric motors in the closing years of the century 
has been phenomenal, even leaving out of consideration 
their use in electric railways. 

Twenty years ago an electric motor was a curiosity; 
fifty years ago crude examples run by batteries were 
only to be occasionally found in cabinets of scientific 
apparatus. Machinery Hall, at the Centennial Exhi- 
bition of 1876, typified the mill of the past, never again 
to be reproduced, with its huge engine and lines of heavy 
shafting and belts conveying power to the different 
tools or machines in operation. The modern mill or 
factory has its engines and dynamos located wherever 
convenient, its electric lines and numerous motors con- 
nected thereto, and each of them either driving compara- 
tively short lines of shafting or attached to drive single 
pieces of machinery. The wilderness of belts and pul- 
leys which used to characterize a factory is gradually 
being cleared away, and electric distribution of power 
substituted. Moreover, the lighting of the modern mill 
or factory is done from the same electric plant which 
distributes power. 

The electric motor has already partly revolutionized 
the distribution of power for stationary machinery, but 
as applied to railways in place of animal power the revo- 
lution is complete. The period which has elapsed since 

284 



ELECTRICITY 

the first introduction of electric railways is barely a dozen 
years. It is true that a few tentative experiments in 
electric traction were made some time in advance of 1888, 
notably by Siemens, in Berlin, in 1879 and 1880, by 
Stephen D. Field, by T. A. Edison, at Menlo Park, by 
J. C. Henry, by Charles A. Van Depoele, and others. 
If we look farther back we find efforts such as that of 
Farmer, in 1847, to propel railway cars by electric mo- 
tors driven by currents from batteries carried on the 
cars. These efforts were, of course, doomed to failure, 
for economical reasons. Electric energy from primary 
batteries was too costly, and if it had been cheaper, the 
types of electric motor used yielded so small a return 
of power for the electric energy spent in driving them 
that commercial success was out of the question. These 
early efforts were, however, instructive, and may now 
be regarded as highly suggestive of later work. Trac- 
tion by the use of storage batteries carried on an electric 
car has been tried repeatedly, but appears not to be able 
to compete with systems of direct supply from electric 
lines. The plan survives, however, in the electric auto- 
mobile, many of which have been put into service within 
a year or two. The electric automobile is not well fitted 
for country touring; it is best adapted to cities, where 
facilities for charging and caring for the batteries can 
be had. Moreover, the electric carriage is of all auto- 
mobile carriages the most easily controlled, most ready; 
it emits no smell or hot gases and is nearly noiseless. 

About 1850, Hall, a well-known instrument maker 
of Boston, catalogued a small toy electric locomotive 
dragging a car upon rails which were insulated and 
connected with a stationary battery of two Grove cells. 
This arrangement was sold as a piece of scientific appa- 
ratus, and appears to be the first example of an electri- 
cally driven vehicle connected by rolling contacts to an 
immovable energy source. Other early experimenters, 

285 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

such as Siemens, Field, and Daft, subsequently to Hall, 
used in actual railway work the supply by insulated 
tracks. This was supplanted later by overhead insu- 
lated wires or by the insulated third rail. Siemens & 
Halske, of Berlin, used a special form of overhead sup- 
ply in 1 88 1, and during the electrical exhibition in Paris 
in that year, a street tramway line was run by them. 
Later, Edison experimented with a third-rail-supply line 
at Menlo Park ; and at Portrush, in Ireland, an actual 
railway was put in operation by Siemens & Halske, using 
the third-rail system. This was about 1883. The power 
of the Portrush railway was that of a water-wheel driv- 
ing the generating dynamo. 

The modern overhead trolley, or under-running trol- 
ley, as it is called, seems to have been first invented by 
Van Depoele, and used by him in practical electric rail- 
way work about 1886 and thereafter. The universality 
of this invention for overhead supply marks the de- 
vice as a really important advance in the art of electric 
traction. Van Depoele was also a pioneer in the use 
of an underground conduit, which he employed suc- 
cessfully in Toronto in 1884. The names of Edward 
M. Bentley and Walter H. Knight stand out prominently 
in connection with the first use of an underground con- 
duit, tried under their plans in August, 1884, at Cleve- 
land, on the tracks of the horse-railway company. 

We have barely outlined the history of the electric- 
motor railway up to the beginning of a period of wonder- 
ful development, resulting in the almost complete replace- 
ment by electric traction of horse traction or tramway 
lines, all within an interval of scarcely more than ten 
years. 

The year 1888 may be said to mark the beginning 
of this work, and in that year the Sprague Company, 
with Frank J. Sprague at its head, put into operation 
the electric line at Richmond, Virginia, using the under- 

286 



ELECTRICITY 

running trolley. Mr. Sprague had been associated with 
Edison in early traction work, and was well known in 
connection with electric - motor work in general. The 
Richmond line was the first large undertaking. It had 
about thirteen miles of track, numerous curves, and 
grades of from three to ten per cent. The enterprise 
was one of great hardihood, and but for ample financial 
backing and determination to spare no effort or expendi- 
ture conducive to success, must certainly have failed. 
The motors were too small for the work, and there had 
not been found any proper substitute for the metal com- 
mutator brushes on the motors — a source of endless 
trouble and of an enormous expense for repairs. Never- 
theless, the Richmond installation, kept in operation 
as it was in spite of all difficulties, served as an object- 
lesson, and had the effect of convincing Mr. Henry M. 
Whitney and the directors of the West End Street Rail- 
way, of Boston, of the feasibility of equipping the entire 
railway system of Boston electrically. Meanwhile the 
merging of the Van Depoele and Bentley-Knight in- 
terests into the Thomson-Houston Electric Light Com- 
pany brought a new factor into the field, the Sprague 
interests being likewise merged with the Edison General 
Electric Company. 

The West End Company, with two hundred miles of 
track in and around Boston, began to equip its lines in 
1888 with the Thomson-Houston plant. The success of 
this great undertaking left no doubt of the future of elec- 
tric traction. The difficulties which had seriously threat- 
ened future success were gradually removed. 

The electric railway progress was so great in the 
United States that about January 1, 1891, there were 
more than two hundred and forty lines in operation. 
About thirty thousand horses and mules were replaced 
by electric power in the single year of 1891. In 1892 
the Thomson-Houston interests and those of the Edison 

287 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

General Electric Company were merged in the General 
Electric Company, an event of unusual importance, as 
it brought together the two great competitors in electric 
traction at that date. Other electric manufacturers, chief 
among which was the Westinghouse Company, also en- 
tered the field and became prominent factors in rail- 
way extension. In a few 3 T ears horse traction in the 
United States on tramway lines virtually disappeared. 
Many cable lines were converted to electric lines, and 
projects such as the Boston Subway began to be 
planned. Not the least of the advantages of electric 
traction is the higher speed attainable with safety. The 
comfort and cleanliness of the cars, lighted brilliantly 
at night, and heated in winter by the same source of en- 
ergy which is used to propel them, are important factors. 
All these things, together with the great extension of 
the lines into suburban and country districts, and the 
interconnection of the lines of one district with those 
of another, cannot fail to have a decidedly beneficial 
effect upon the life, habits, and health of the people. 
While the United States and Canada have been and 
still are the theatre of the enormous advance in electric 
traction, as in other electric work, many electric car 
lines have in recent years been established in Great 
Britain and on the continent of Europe. Countries 
like Japan, Australia, South Africa, and South Amer- 
ica have also in operation many electric trolley lines, 
and the work is rapidly extending. Most of this work, 
even in Europe, has been carried out either by im- 
portation of equipment from America, or by apparatus 
manufactured there, but following American practice 
closely. The bulk of the work has been done with 
the overhead wire and under-running trolley, but there 
are notable instances of the use of electric conductors in 
underground slotted conduits, chief of which are the 
great systems of street railway in New York City. 

288 



ELECTRICITY 

In Chicago the application of motor-cars in trains upon 
the elevated railway followed directly upon the practical 
demonstration at the World's Fair of the capabilities of 
third-rail electric traction on the Intramural Elevated 
Railway, and the system is rapidly extending so as to 
include all elevated city roads. A few years will doubt- 
less see the great change accomplished. 

The motor-car, or car propelled by its own motors, has 
also been introduced upon standard steam roads to a 
limited extent as a supplement to steam traction. The 
earliest of these installations are the one at Nantasket, 
Massachusetts, and that between Hartford and New 
Britain, in Connecticut. A number of special high-speed 
lines, using similar plans, have gone into operation in 
recent years. The problem of constructing electric mo- 
tors of sufficient robustness for heavy work and control- 
ling them effectively was not an easy one, and the diffi- 
culties were increased greatly because of the placing of 
the motors under the car body, exposed to wet, to dust 
and dirt of road. The advantage of the motor-car, or 
motor-car train, is that the traction or hold upon the track 
increases with the increase of the weight or load carried. 
It is thus able to be accelerated rapidly after a stop, and 
also climb steep grades without slipping its wheels. 
Nevertheless, there are circumstances which favor the 
employment of a locomotive at the head of a train, as in 
steam practice. This is the case in lines where a train 
of coal or ore cars is drawn by electric mining locomo- 
tives. Many such plants are in operation, and, at the 
same time the electric power is used to drive fans for ven- 
tilating, pumps for drainage, electric hoists, etc., besides 
being used for lighting the mines. The trains in the 
tunnels of the Metropolitan Underground Railway of 
London have for many years been operated by steam 
locomotives with the inevitable escape of steam, foul, 
suffocating gases, and more or less soot. 
T 289 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

A number of years ago the tunnel of the City and 
South London Railway was put into successful opera- 
tion with electric locomotives drawing the trains of cars, 
and the nuisance caused D3 7 steam avoided. This work 
recalls the earfy efforts of Field, of Daft, and Bentley 
and Knight in providing an electric locomotive for re- 
placing the steam plant of the elevated roads in New 
York City. Well- conceived as many of these plans 
were, electric traction had not reached a sufficient de- 
velopment, and the efforts were abandoned after several 
more or less successful trials. It is now seen that the 
motor-car train may advantageously replace the loco- 
motive-drawn train in such instances as these elevated 
railways. 

The three largest and most powerful electric locomo- 
tives ever put into service are those which are emploj'ed 
to take trains through the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 
tunnel at Baltimore. They have been in service about 
seven or eight years, and are fully equal in power to the 
large steam locomotives used on steam roads. Fre- 
quently trains of cars, including the steam locomotive 
itself, are drawn through the tunnel by these huge elec- 
tric engines, the fires on the steam machines being for 
the time checked so as to prevent fouling the air of the 
tunnel. There was opened, in London, in 1900, a new 
railway called the Central Underground, equipped with 
twenty-six electric locomotives for drawing its trains. 
The electric and power equipment, which embodied in 
itself the latest results of American practice, was also 
manufactured in America to suit the needs of the road. 
Other similar railways are in contemplation in London 
and in other cities of Europe. As on the elevated roads 
in New York City, the replacement of underground 
steam traction, where it exists, by electric traction is 
evidently only a question of a few years. 

An electric railway may exemplify a power -trans- 

290 



ELECTRICITY 

mission system in which power is delivered to moving 
vehicles. But the distances so covered are not generally 
more than a few miles from the generating station. Where, 
however, abundant water-power exists, as at Niagara, 
or where fuel is very expensive and power is to be had 
only at great distances from the place at w T hich it is to be 
used, electricity furnishes the most effective means for 
transmission and distribution. Between the years 1880 
and 1890 the device called alternating current trans- 
former was developed to a considerable degree of per- 
fection. It is, in reality, a modified induction coil, con- 
sisting of copper wire and iron, whereby a current sent 
through one of its coils will induce similar currents in 
the other coils of apparatus. It has the great advan- 
tage of having no moving parts. Faraday, in 1831, 
discovered the fundamental principle of the modern 
transformer. Not only, however, will the current in one 
coil of the apparatus generate by induction a new cur- 
rent in an entirely separate coil or circuit, but by suit- 
ably proportioning the windings we may exchange, as 
it were, a large low-pressure current for a small but high- 
pressure current, or vice versa. This exchange may be 
made with a very small percentage of loss of energy. 
These valuable properties of the transformer have ren- 
dered it of supreme importance in recent electrical ex- 
tension. The first use made of it, in 1 885-86, was to 
transform a high-pressure current into one of low press- 
ure in electric lighting, enabling a small wire to be used 
to convey electric energy at high pressure, and without 
much loss, to a long distance from the station. This 
energy at high pressure reaches the transformer placed 
within or close to the building to be lighted. A low- 
pressure safe current is conveyed from the transformer 
to the wires connected to the lamps. In this way a cur- 
rent of two thousand volts, an unsafe and unsuitable 
pressure for incandescent lighting, is exchanged for one 

291 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

of about one hundred volts, which is quite safe. In 
this way, also, the supply station is enabled to reach 
a customer too far away to be supplied directly with 
current at one hundred volts, without enormous expense 
for copper conductors. 

The alternating current transformer not only greatly 
extended the radius of supply from a single station, but 
also enabled the station to be conveniently located where 
water and coal could be had without difficulty. It also 
permitted the distant water-powers to become sources 
of electric energy for lighting, power, or for other service. 
For example, a water-power located at a distance of fifty 
to one hundred miles or more from a city, or from a large 
manufacturing centre where cost of fuel is high, may 
be utilized as follows: A power-station will be located 
upon the site of the water-power, and the dynamos therein 
will generate electricity at, say, two thousand volts 
pressure. By means of step-up transformers this will 
be exchanged for a current of thirty thousand volts for 
transmission over a line of copper or aluminum wire to 
the distant consumption area. Here there will be a set of 
step-down transformers which will exchange the thirty- 
thousand-volt line current for one of so low a pressure as 
to be safe for local distribution to lamps, to motors, etc., 
either stationary or upon a railway. The same trans- 
mission plant may simultaneously supply energy for 
lighting, for power, for heat, and for charging storage 
batteries. It may, therefore, be employed both day and 
night. 

These long-distance power transmission plants are 
generally spoken of as "two-phase," "three-phase," or 
"polyphase" systems. Before 1890 no such plants ex- 
isted. A large number of such installations are now 
working over distances of a few miles up to one hundred 
miles. They differ from what are known as single- 
phase alternating systems in employing, instead of a 

292 



ELECTRICITY 

single alternating current, two, three, or more, which 
are sent over separate lines, and in which the electric 
impulses are not simultaneous, but follow each other in 
regular succession, overlapping each other's dead points, 
so to speak. Early suggestions of such a plan, about 
1880, and thereafter, by Bailey, Deprez, and others, bore 
no fruit, and not until Tesla's announcement of his poly- 
phase system, in 1888, was much attention given to the 
subject. A widespread interest in Tesla's work was in- 
voked, but several years elapsed before engineering dif- 
ficulties were overcome. This work was done mainly 
by the technical staffs of the large manufacturing com- 
panies, and it was necessary to be done before any notable 
power transmissions on the polyphase system could be es- 
tablished. After 1892 the growth became very rapid. 

The falls of Niagara early attracted the attention of 
engineers to the possibility of utilizing at least a fraction 
of the power. It was seen that several hundred thousand 
horse-power might be drawn from it without materially 
affecting the fall, itself equivalent to several millions of 
horse-power. A gigantic power-station has lately been es- 
tablished at Niagara, taking water from a distance above 
the falls and delivering it below the falls through a long 
tunnel which forms the tail race. Ten water-wheels, lo- 
cated in an immense wheel-pit about two hundred feet deep, 
each wheel of a capacity of five thousand horse-power, 
drive large vertical shafts, at the upper end of which are 
located the large two-phase dynamos, each of five thou- 
sand horse-power. The electric energy from these ma- 
chines is in part raised in pressure by huge transformers 
for transmission to distant points, such as the city of 
Buffalo, and a large portion is delivered to the numerous 
manufacturing plants located at moderate distances 
from the power-station. Besides the supply of energy 
for lighting, and for motors, including railways, other 
recent uses of electricity to which we have not yet alluded 

293 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

are splendidly exemplified at Niagara. Davy's brilliant 
discovery of the alkali metals, sodium and potassium, 
at the opening of the century, showed the great chemical 
energy of the electric current. Its actions were after- 
wards carefully studied, notably by the illustrious Fara- 
day, whose discoveries in connection with magnetism 
and magneto-electricity have been briefly described. 
The electric current was found to act as a most potent 
chemical force, decomposing and recomposing many 
chemical compounds, dissolving and depositing metals. 
Hence, early in the century arose the art of electro- 
plating of metals, such as electro-gilding, silver-plating, 
nickel-plating, and copper deposition as in electrotyping. 
These arts are now practised on a very large scale, and 
naturally have affected the whole course of manufact- 
uring methods during the century. Moreover, since 
the introduction of dynamo current, electrotysis has 
come to be employed in huge plants, not only for sepa- 
rating metals from each other, as in refining them, but in 
addition for separating them from their ores, for the 
manufacture of chemical compounds before unknown, 
and for the cheap production of numerous substances 
of use in the various arts on a large scale. Vast quan- 
tities of copper are refined, and silver and gold often 
obtained from residues in sufficient amount to pay well 
for the process. 

At Niagara also are works for the production of the 
metal aluminum from its ores. Similar works exist 
at other places here and abroad where power is cheap. 
This metal, which competes in price with brass, bulk 
for bulk, was only obtainable before its electric reduc- 
tion at $25 to $30 per pound. The metal sodium is also 
extracted from soda. A large plant at Niagara also uses 
the electric current for the manufacture of chlorine for 
bleach, and caustic soda, both from common salt. Chlo- 
rate of potassium is also made at Niagara by electrolysis. 

294 



ELECTRICITY 

The field of electro-chemistry is, indeed, full of great 
future possibilities. Large furnaces heated by elec- 
tricity, a single one of which will consume more than 
a thousand horse -power, exist at Niagara. In these 
furnaces is manufactured from coke and sand, by the 
Acheson process, an abrasive material called carbo- 
rundum, which is almost as hard as diamond, but quite 
low in cost. It is made into slabs and into wheels for 
grinding hard substances. The electric furnace fur- 
nishes also the means for producing artificial plumbago, 
or graphite, almost perfectly pure, the raw material be- 
ing coke powder. 

A large amount of power from Niagara is also con- 
sumed for the production in special electric arc furnaces 
of carbide of calcium from coke and lime. This is the 
source of acetylene gas, the new illuminant, which is 
generated when water is brought into contact with the 
carbide. The high temperature of the electric furnace 
thus renders possible chemical actions which under 
ordinary furnace heat would not take place. Henri 
Moissan, a French scientist, well known for his brilliant 
researches in electric furnace work, has even shown 
that real diamonds can be made under special conditions 
in the electric furnace. He has, in fact, probably prac- 
tised in a small way what has occurred on a grand scale 
in nature, resulting in diamond fields such as those 
at Kimberley. One problem less is thus left to be solved. 
The electro - chemical and kindred arts are practised 
not alone at Niagara, but at many other places where 
power is cheap. Extensive plants have grown up, 
mostly within the five years before the close of the cen- 
tury. All of the great developments in this field have 
come about within the last decade. 

The use of electricity for heating is not confined to 
electric furnaces, in which the exceedingly high tempera- 
ture obtainable is the factor giving rise to success. While 

295 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

it is not likely that electricity will soon be used for general 
heating, special instances, such as the warming of elec- 
tric cars in winter by electric heaters, the operation of 
cooking appliances by electric current, the heating of 
sad-irons and the like, give evidence of the possibilities 
should there ever be found means for the generation of 
electric energy from fuel with such high efficiency as eigh- 
ty per cent, or more. Present methods give, under most 
favorable conditions, barely ten per cent., ninety per cent, 
of the energy value of the fuel being unavoidably wasted. 
Another application of the heating power of electric 
currents is found in the Thomson electric welding process, 
the development of which has practically taken place 
in the past ten years. In this process an exceedingly 
large current, at very low electric pressure, traverses 
a joint between two pieces of metal to be united. It 
heats the joint to fusion or softening; the pieces are 
pushed together and welded. Here the heat is generated 
in the solid metal, for at no time during the operation 
are the pieces separated. The current is usually ob- 
tained from a welding transformer, an example of an 
extreme type of step -down transformer. Current at 
several hundred volts passed into the primary winding 
is exchanged for an enormous current at only two or 
three volts in the welding circuit in which the work 
is done. The present uses of this electric welding proc- 
ess are numerous and varied. Pieces of most of the 
metals and alloys, before regarded as unweldable, are 
capable of being joined not only to pieces of the same 
metal, but also to different metals. Electric welding 
is applied on the large scale, making joints in wires 
or rods, for welding wagon and carriage wheel tires, 
for making barrel-hoops and bands for pails, for axles 
of vehicles, and for carriage framing. It has given rise 
to special manufactures, such as electrically welded 
steel pipe or tube, wire fencing, etc. It is used for weld- 

296 



ELECTRICITY 

ing together the joints of steel car -rails, for welding 
teeth in saws, for making many parts of bicycles, and in 
tool making. An instance of its peculiar adaptability 
to unusual conditions is the welding of the iron bands 
embedded within the body of a rubber vehicle tire for 
holding the tire in place. For this purpose the electric 
weld has been found almost essential. 

Another branch of electric development concerns the 
storage of electricity. The storage battery is based 
upon principles discovered by Gaston Plants, and ap- 
plied, since 1881, by Brush, by Faure, and others. Some 
of the larger lighting stations employ as reservoirs of 
electric energy large batteries charged by surplus dyna- 
mo current. This is afterwards drawn upon when the 
consumer's load is heavy, as during the evening. The 
storage battery is, however, a heavy, cumbrous ap- 
paratus, of limited life, easily destroyed unless guarded 
with skill. If a form not possessing these faults be ever 
found, the field of possible application is almost limitless. 

The above by no means complete account of the prog- 
ress in electric applications during the century just closed 
should properly be supplemented by an account of the 
accompanying great advances regarded from the purely 
scientific aspect. It is, however, only possible to make 
a brief reference thereto within the limits of this article. 
The scientific study of electricity and the application of 
mathematical methods in its treatment has kept busy a 
host of workers and drawn upon the resources of the 
ablest minds the age has produced. Gauss, Weber, 
Ampere, Faraday, Maxwell, Helmholtz, are no longer 
with us. Of the early founders of the science we have 
yet such men as Lord Kelvin, formerly Sir William 
Thomson, Mascart, and others, still zealous in scientific 
work. Following them are a large number, notable 
for valuable contributions to the progress of electrical 
science, in discoveries, in research, and in mathematical 

297 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

treatment of the various problems presented. Modern 
magnetism took form in the hands of Rowland, Hop- 
kinson, Ewing, and many other able workers. Max- 
well's electro-magnetic theory of light is confirmed by 
the brilliant researches of the late Dr. Hertz, too early 
lost to science. Hertz proved that all luminous phe- 
nomena are in essence electrical. The wireless teleg- 
raphy of to-day is a direct outcome of Hertz's experi- 
ments on electric waves. It is but. little more than ten 
years since Hertz announced his results to the world. 
His work, supplemented by that of Branly, Lodge, Mar- 
coni, and others, made wireless telegraphy a possibility. 

The wonderful X-ray, and the rich scientific har- 
vest which has followed the discovery by Rontgen of 
invisible radiation from a vacuum tube, was preceded 
by much investigation of the effects of electric discharges 
in vacuum tubes, and Hittorf, followed by Crookes, 
had given special study to these effects in very high 
or nearly perfect vacua. Crookes, though especially en- 
riching science by his work, missed the peculiar X-ray, 
which, nevertheless, must have been emitted from many 
of his vacuum tubes, not only in his hands, but in those 
of subsequent students. It was as late as 1896 that 
Rontgen announced his discovery. Since that time 
several other sources of invisible radiation have been 
discovered, more or less similar in effect to the radia- 
tions from a vacuum tube, but emitted, singular as the 
fact is, from rare substances extracted from certain 
minerals. Leaving out of consideration the great value 
of the X-ray to physicians and surgeons, its effect in 
stimulating scientific inquiry has almost been incal- 
culable. The renewed study of effects of electric dis- 
charge in vacuum tubes has already, in the work of 
such investigators as Lenard, J. J. Thomson, and others, 
apparently carried the subdivision of matter far beyond 
the time-honored chemical atom, and has gone far tow- 

298 



ELECTRICITY 

ards showing the essential unity of all the chemical ele- 
ments. It is as unlikely that the myste^ of the material 
universe will ever be completely solved as it is that we can 
gain an adequate conception of infinite space or time. 
But we can at least extend the range of our mental vision 
of the processes of nature as we do our real vision into 
space depths by the telescope and spectroscope. There 
can now be no question that electric conditions and actions 
are more fundamental than many hitherto so regarded. 

The nineteenth century closed with many important 
problems in electrical science unsolved. What great 
or far-reaching discoveries are yet in store, who can 
tell ? What valuable practical developments are to 
come, who can predict ? The electrical progress has 
been great — very great — but after all only a part of 
that grander advance in so many other fields. The 
hands of man are strengthened by the control of mighty 
forces. His electric lines traverse the mountain passes 
as well as the plains. His electric railway scales the 
Jungfrau. But he still spends his best effort, and has 
always done so, in the construction and equipment of 
his engines of destruction, and now exhausts the mines 
of the world of valuable metals, for ships of war, whose 
ultimate goal is the bottom of the sea. In this also 
electricity is made to play an increasingly important 
part. It trains the guns, loads them, fires them. It 
works the signals and the search-lights. It ventilates 
the ship, blows the fires, and lights the dark spaces. 
Perhaps all this is necessary now, and, if so, well. But 
if a fraction of the vast expenditure entailed were turned 
to the encouragement of advance in the arts and em- 
ployments of peace in the twentieth century, can it be 
doubted that, at the close, the nineteenth century might 
come to be regarded, in spite of its achievements, as a 
rather wasteful, semi-barbarous transition period? 

Elihu Thomson. 



PHYSICS 



PHYSICS 

/^\N January 7, 16 10, Galileo, turning his telescope 
^ towards Jupiter, was the first to see the beautiful 
system of that planet in which the universe is epitomized. 
He had ahead}? studied the variegated surface of the moon, 
and he had seen the spots upon the sun. A little later, 
in spite of the feeble power of his instrument, he had dis- 
covered that the sun rotates upon an axis, and something 
of the wonderful nature of the planet Saturn had been 
revealed to him. The overwhelming evidence thus af- 
forded of the truth of the hypothesis of Copernicus made 
him its chief exponent. The time had come for man to 
know, as he had never known or even dreamed before, 
his true relation to the universe of which he was so in- 
significant a part. In a single year nearly all of these 
capital discoveries were made. It was truly an era of 
intellectual expansion ; never before and never since has 
man's intellectual horizon enlarged with such enormous 
rapidity. One needs little imagination to share with 
this ardent philosopher the enthusiasm of the moment 
when, because some, fearing the evidence of their senses, 
refused to look through the slender tube, he wrote to Kep- 
ler: "Oh, my dear Kepler, how I wish we could have 
one hearty laugh together! . . . Why are you not here? 
What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious 
folly!" 

Galileo died in 1642, and in the same year Newton 
was born. When twenty-four years old he "began to 
think of gravity extending to the orb of the moon," and 

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THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

before the end of the century he had discovered and es- 
tablished the great law of universal gravitation. Thus, 
at the end of the seventeenth century, the foundations of 
modern physics were in place. During the eighteenth 
century they were much built upon, but it was the nine- 
teenth that witnessed not only the greatest advance in 
detail, but the most important generalizations made since 
the time of Galileo and Newton. 

In endeavoring to present to the intelligent but per- 
haps unscientific reader a brief review of the accom- 
plishments of that "wonderful century" in the domain 
of physics, one must not attempt more than an outline 
of greater events, and it will be convenient to arrange 
them under the several principal subdivisions of the 
science, according to the usually accepted classification. 

HEAT 

Although more than one philosopher of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries suggested the identitj? 
of heat and molecular motion, the impression made was 
not lasting, and up to very near the beginning of the 
nineteenth century the caloric theory was accepted al- 
most without dispute. This theory implied that heat 
was a subtle fluid, definite quantities of which were added 
to or subtracted from material substances when they be- 
came hot or cold. As carefully conducted experiments 
seemed to show that a body weighed no more or no less 
when hot than when cold, it was necessary to attribute to 
this fluid called caloric the mysterious propert}? of im- 
ponderability, that is, unlike all forms of ordinary matter, 
it possessed no weight. To avoid calling it matter, it 
was by man}? classed with light, electricity, and magnet- 
ism, as one of the imponderable agents. Various other 
properties were attributed to caloric, necessary to the 
reasonable explanation of a steadily increasing array 

304 



PHYSICS 

of experimental facts. It was declared to be elastic, its 
particles being mutually self-repellent. It was thought 
to attract ordinary matter, and an ingenious theory of 
caloric was constructed, modelled upon Newton's fa- 
mous but erroneous corpuscular theory of light. Dur- 
ing the latter part of the eighteenth century Joseph 
Black, professor in the Universities of Glasgow and 
Edinburgh, developed his theory of latent heat, which, 
although founded upon a false notion of the nature of 
heat, was a most important contribution to science. The 
downfall of the caloric theory must be largely credited 
to the work of a famous American who published the 
results of his experiments just at the close of the eigh- 
teenth century. Benjamin Thompson, generally known 
as Count Rumf ord, was born in the town of Woburn, Mass- 
achusetts, in 1753. His inclination towards physical ex- 
perimentation was strong in his early youth, and he re- 
ceived much instruction and inspiration from the lectures 
of Professor John Winthrop, of Harvard College, some 
of which he was enabled to attend under trying con- 
ditions. Having received special official consideration 
by appointment to office under one of the colonial gov- 
ernors, he was accused at the breaking out of the Revo- 
lutionary War of a leaning towards Toryism, and was 
thus prevented from making his career among his own 
people. At the age of twenty-two years he fled to Eng- 
land, returning to America only for a brief period in 
command of a British regiment. In England he soon 
became eminent as an experimental philosopher, and in 
1778 became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He after- 
wards entered the service of the Elector of Bavaria, by 
whom he was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. 
In 1799 he returned to London and founded the " Royal 
Institution," which was destined during the next hun- 
dred years to surpass all other foundations in the rich- 
ness and importance of its contributions to physical sci- 

u 305 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ence. It was while at Munich that Rumford made his 
famous experiments on the nature of heat, to which he 
had been led by observing the great amount of heat gen- 
erated in the boring of cannon. Finding that he was 
able to make a considerable quantity of water actually 
boil by the heat generated by a blunt boring tool, he 
concluded that the supply of heat from such a source 
was practically inexhaustible and that it could be gen- 
erated continuously if only the motion of the tool under 
friction was kept up. He declared that anything which 
could thus be produced without limitation by an insu- 
lated body or system of bodies could not possibly be a 
material substance, and that under the circumstances of 
the experiment, the only thing that was or could be thus 
continuously communicated was motion. 

Count Rumford 's conclusions were not for a long time 
accepted. Davy, the brilliant professor and eloquent 
lecturer at the newly established Royal Institution, es- 
poused the mechanical theory of heat and made the strik- 
ing experiment of melting two pieces of ice by rubbing 
them together remote from any source of heat. His 
contemporary, Thomas Young, who overturned New- 
ton's corpuscular theory of light and showed that it was 
a wave phenomenon, also advocated Rumford 's notion 
of the nature of heat, but even among physicists of high 
rank it had made little headway as late as the middle 
of the nineteenth century. In the eighth edition of the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1856, the im- 
mediate predecessor of the current issue, heat is defined 
as "a material agent of a peculiar nature, highly at- 
tenuated." And this, in spite of the fact that previous 
to that date the mechanical theory had been completely 
proved by the labors of Mayer, Joule, Helmholtz, and 
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). By these men a solid 
foundation for the theory had been found in a great phys- 
ical law of such importance that it is justly considered 

306 



PHYSICS 

to be the most far-reaching generalization in natural 
philosophy since the time of Newton. Some account of 
this law and its discovery will be given later in this paper. 

Among the most important of the century's contri- 
butions to our knowledge of heat must be included the 
work of Fourier, as embodied in his Theorie Analytique 
de la Chaleur, published in 1822. Joseph Fourier was 
born in 1768, and died in 1830. He belonged to that 
splendid group of philosophers of which the French 
nation may always be proud, whose work constitutes 
a large part of the lustre of intellectual France during 
her most brilliant period, the later years of the eigh- 
teenth and the earlier years of the nineteenth century. 
His contemporaries included such men as Laplace, Arago, 
Lagrange, Fresnel, and Carnot. Fourier wrote espe- 
cially of the movement of heat in solids, and as his thesis 
depended in no way on the nature of heat it will always 
be regarded as a classic. His assumption that conduc- 
tivity was independent of temperature was shortly proved 
to be erroneous, but his general argument and conclu- 
sions were not greatly affected by this discovery. His 
work is one of the most beautiful examples yet produced 
of the application of mathematics to physical research, 
and mathematical and physical science were equally en- 
riched by it. In its broader aspects his law of conduction 
includes the transfer of electricity in good conductors, 
and is the real basis of Ohm's law. 

One of the most skillful and successful experimenters 
in heat was also a Frenchman, Henri Victor Regnault 
(1810--78). He greatly improved the construction and 
use of the thermometer, and was the first to discover that 
the indications of an air thermometer and one of mer- 
cury did not exactly agree, because they did not expand 
in the same degree for equal increases of temperature. 
His most important work was on the expansion of gases, 
vapor pressure, specific heat of water, etc., and for care- 

307 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ful, patient measuring he had a positive genius. Until 
he proved the contrary it had been assumed that all gases 
had the same coefficient of expansion, and Boyle's law 
that the volume of a gas was inversely proportional to 
its pressure had not been questioned. His tables of the 
elastic force of steam have been of immense practical 
value, but his studies of the expansion of gases are of 
greater interest because they have pointed the way to 
one of the most important accomplishments of the cen- 
tury, the liquefaction of all known gases. 

During the earlier years of this century it was the 
custom to consider vapors and gases as quite distinct 
forms of matter. Vapors always came, by evaporation, 
from liquids, and could always be "condensed" or re- 
duced to the liquid form without difficult}^, but it was 
not thought possible to liquefy the so-called " permanent " 
gases. The first man to attack the problem system- 
atically was Michael Faraday, who, before the end of the 
first third of the century, had liquefied several gases, 
mostly by producing them by chemical reactions under 
pressure. Several of the more easily reducible gases or 
vapors, such as ammonia, sulphurous acid, and prob- 
ably chlorine, had been previously liquefied by cold, 
but a quarter of a century elapsed after Faraday's re- 
searches before the true relation of the liquid and gaseous 
states of matter was understood, and it was found that 
both increase of pressure and lowering of temperature 
were, in general, essential to the liquefaction of a gas. 
It was Thomas Andrews, of Belfast, who first showed, in 
a paper published in 1863, that there was a continuity 
in the liquid and gaseous states of matter, that for each 
substance there was a critical temperature at which 
it became a homogeneous fluid, neither a liquid nor a 
gas: that above this temperature great pressure would 
not liquefy, while below it the substance might exist as 
partly liquid and partly gas. He pointed out the fact 

308 



PHYSICS 

that for the so-called permanent gases this critical tem- 
perature must be exceedingly low, and if such temperature 
could be reached liquefaction would follow. 

Subsequent progress in the liquefaction of gases came 
about by following this suggestion. Very low tem- 
peratures were produced by subjecting the gas to great 
reduction in volume by pressure, removing the heat of 
compression by conduction and radiation, and then by 
sudden expansion its temperature was greatly lowered. 
As early as 1877 two Frenchmen, Pictet and Cailletet, 
had succeeded in liquefying oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, 
and air. During the past twenty years great improve- 
ments have been made in the methods of accomplishing 
these transformations, so that to-day it is easy to pro- 
duce considerable quantities of all of the principal gases 
in a liquid form, and by carrying the reduction in tempera- 
ture still further portions of the liquid may be changed 
to the solid state. The most important work along 
this line has been done by Wroblewski and Olszewski, 
of the University of Cracow, and Professor Dewar, of 
the Royal Institution in London. Temperatures as low 
as about two hundred and fifty degrees C. below the 
freezing-point of water have been produced, the " abso- 
lute zero" being only two hundred and seventy-three 
degrees C. below that point. These experiments prom- 
ise to throw much light on the nature of matter, and 
they are especially interesting as revealing its extraor- 
dinary properties at extremely low temperatures. Among 
the most curious and suggestive is the fact that the elec- 
trical resistance of pure metals diminishes at a rate which 
indicates that at the absolute zero it would vanish, and 
these metals would become perfect conductors of elec- 
tricity. 

The dynamics of heat, or "thermo-dynamics," was an 
important field of research in the early part of the century, 
on account of its practical application to the improve- 

309 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

merit of the steam-engine. The science was created 
by Carnot, who, in spite of the fact that his views regard- 
ing the nature of heat were erroneous, discovered some 
of the most interesting relations among the quantities 
involved, and discussed their applications to the heat 
engines with great skill. Subsequent contributors to the 
theory and practice of thermo-dynamics were Clausius, 
Rankine, Lord Kelvin, and Professor Tait. 

The mechanical theory of heat naturally led up to 
what has already been referred to as the most important 
generalization in physical science since the time of 
Newton, the doctrine of 

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 

This principle puts physics in its relation to energy 
where chemistry has long been in its relation to matter. 
If matter were not conservative, if it could be created or 
destroyed at will, chemistry would be an impossible 
science. Physics is put upon a solid foundation by the 
assumption of a like conservatism in energy; it can 
neither be created nor destroyed, although it may appear 
in many different forms which are, in general, mutually 
interconvertible. 

Many men have contributed to the establishment of 
this great principle, but it was actually discovered and 
proved by the labors of three or four. Although it was 
practically all done before the middle of the nineteenth 
century, its general popular recognition did not come 
until a quarter of a century later. The doctrine was 
first distinctly formulated by Robert Mayer, a German 
physician, who published in 1842 a suggestive paper on 
"The Forces of Inorganic Nature," which, however, 
attracted little or no attention. Mayer had not ap- 
proached the problem from an experimental stand-point, 
but at about the same time it was attacked most success- 

310 



PHYSICS 

fully from this side by a young Englishman, James 
Prescott Joule, son of a wealthy brewer of Manchester, 
England. Joule made the first really accurate deter- 
mination of the mechanical equivalent of a given quan- 
tity of heat, a physical constant which Rumford had 
tried to measure, reaching only a rough approximation. 
Substantially Joule's result was that the heat energy 
necessary to raise the temperature of any given mass of 
water one degree Fahr. is the equivalent of the mechanical 
energy required to lift that mass through a height of 
seven hundred and seventy-two feet against the force 
of the earth's attraction; and, conversely, if a mass of 
water be allowed to fall through a distance of seven 
hundred and seventy-two feet under the action of gravity, 
and at the end of its motion be instantly arrested, the heat 
generated will suffice to raise its temperature one degree 
Fahr. Of such vast importance is this numerical coeffi- 
cient that it has been called the golden number of the nine- 
teenth century. Since Joule's time it has been redeter- 
mined by several physicists, notably by Professor Row- 
land, of Baltimore, the general conclusion being that 
Joule's number was somewhat, but not greatly, too small. 
The first clear and full exposition of the doctrine of 
the conservation of energy was given by Joule in a 
popular lecture in Manchester in 1847, but it attracted 
little attention until a few months later, when the author 
presented his theory at a meeting of the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science. Even among 
scientific men it would have passed without comment or 
consideration had it not been for the presence of another 
young Englishman, then as little known as Joule him- 
self, who began a series of remarks, appreciative and 
critical, which resulted in making Joule's paper the sen- 
sation of the meeting. This was William Thomson, 
who had been, only a year before, at the age of twenty- 
two years, appointed professor of natural philosophy 

311 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

at the University of Glasgow, now known as Lord Kelvin, 
the most versatile, brilliant, and profound student of 
physical science which the century has produced. From 
that day to the death of Joule (1889) these two men were 
closely associated in the demonstration and exploitation 
of a great principle of which they were at first almost 
the sole exponents among English-speaking people. 

By an interesting coincidence, in the same year in 
which Joule announced the result of his experiments, 
the Physical Society of Berlin listened to a paper al- 
most identical with Joule's in character and conclusions, 
but prepared quite independently, by a young German 
physician, Herman von Helmholtz, destined to rank 
at the time of his death, in 1893, as one of the very first 
mathematicians of the age, doubtless the first physi- 
ologist of his time, and as a physicist with whom hot 
more than one other of the nineteenth century may be 
compared. Helmholtz 's paper was rejected by the ed- 
itor of the leading scientific journal of Germany, but 
his work was so important that he must always share 
with Joule and Kelvin in the glory of this epoch-making 
generalization. 

Even a brief sketch of the history of the doctrine of 
the conservation of energy would be incomplete if men- 
tion were not made of the work of Tyndall. Although 
by original research he contributed in no small degree 
to the demonstration of the theory, it is mainly through 
his wonderful skill in popular presentation of the prin- 
ciples of physical science that he becomes related to the 
great movement of the middle of the century. His 
masterful exposition of the new theory in a course of 
lectures at the Royal Institution, given in 1862 and 
published in 1863 under the title Heat as a Mode of 
Motion, was the means of making the intelligent public 
acquainted with its beauty and profound significance, 
and the history of science affords no more admirable 

312 



PHYSICS 

example of the possibilities and wisdom of popular 
scientific writing than this book. As for the principle 
of the conservation of energy itself it is not too much 
to say that during the last half of the century it has been 
the guiding and controlling spirit of all scientific dis- 
covery or of invention through the application of scien- 
tific principles. 

LIGHT 

The revival and final establishment of the undulatory 
or wave theory of light is one of the glories of the nine- 
teenth century, and the credit for it is due to Thomas 
Young, an Englishman, and Fresnel, a Frenchman. 
Newton had conceived, espoused, and, owing to the great 
authority of his name, almost fixed upon the learned 
world the corpuscular or emission theory, which assumes 
that all luminous bodies emit streams of minute cor- 
puscles, which are reflected, refracted, and produce vision. 
Many ordinary optical phenomena were explained by 
this hypothesis only with great difficulty, and some were 
quite unexplainable. The transmission of a disturbance 
or vibratory motion by means of waves, as in the case 
of sound, was a well-recognized principle, and Young 
and Fresnel applied it most successfully to the phenom- 
ena of light. Wave motion, in a general way, is only 
possible in a sensibly continuous medium, such as water, 
air, etc., and the theory that light was a vibratory dis- 
turbance transmitted by means of waves necessitated the 
assumption of the existence of such a medium through- 
out all space in which light travelled. What is known 
as the ethereal medium, at first a purely imaginary 
substance, but whose real existence is practically estab- 
lished, satisfies this demand, and the hypothesis that 
light is transmitted by waves in such a medium, orig- 
inating in a vibratory disturbance at the source, has 
been of inestimable value to physical science. 

313 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

The work of Thomas Young was done in the very 
first years of the nineteenth century. He was for two 
years professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal 
Institution just founded by Count Rumford, and he was 
the first to fill that chair. In 1 80 1, in a paper presented 
to the Royal Society, he argued in favor of the undula- 
tory theory, showing how the interference of waves 
would explain the color of thin plates. His papers 
were not, for several years, received favorably, and they 
were severely criticised by Lord Brougham. Augustus 
Fresnel followed Young, but quite independently, about 
ten years later, and by him the undulatory theory re- 
ceived elaborate experimental and mathematical treat- 
ment. 

In the mean time another Frenchman had made a 
capital discovery in optics, which seemed at first to be 
quite incompatible with the wave theory. This was the 
discovery of what is known as polarization of light by 
Malus, a French engineer, who hit upon it while investi- 
gating double refraction of c^stals, for a study of which 
the French Institute had offered a prize in 1808. Malus 
found that when light fell upon a surface of glass at a 
certain angle a portion of the reflected light appeared to 
have acquired entirely new properties in regard to fur- 
ther reflection, and the same was true of that part of the 
beam which was transmitted through the glass. The 
light thus affected was incapable of further reflection 
under certain conditions, and as the beam seemed to be- 
have differently according to how it was presented to 
the reflecting surface, the term polarization was applied 
to the phenomenon. It was found that the two rays 
into which a single beam of light was split by a doubly 
refracting crystal (a phenomenon which had long been 
known) were affected in this way, and that light was po- 
larized by refraction as well as by reflection. Malus 
was a believer in the corpuscular theory of light, but it 

314 



PHYSICS 

was shortly proved, first by Thomas Young, that the 
phenomenon of polarization was not only not opposed 
to the wave theory, but that that theory furnished a ra- 
tional explanation of it. This explanation, in brief, 
assumes that ordinary light is a wave produced by a 
vibratory motion confined to no particular plane, the 
direction of vibration being at right angles to the di- 
rection of the wave, and in any, or, in rapid succession, 
in all azimuths. When light is polarized the vibratory 
motion in the ether is restricted to one particular form, 
a line if plane polarized, a circle or an ellipse if circu- 
larly or elliptically polarized. This simple hypothesis 
has been found quite adequate, and through its appli- 
cation to the various phenomena of polarization, to- 
gether with the application of Young's theory of the 
interference of waves to the production of color, the un- 
dulatory theory of light was firmty established before 
the middle of the century. There were many noted 
philosophers, however, who stood out long against it, 
notably Brewster, the most famous English student of 
optics of the early part of the century, who declared that 
his "chief objection to the undulatory theory was that 
he could not think the Creator guilty of so clumsy a 
contrivance as the filling of space with ether in order to 
produce light." In studying the nature of light it be- 
came very important to know how fast a light wave trav- 
elled. A tolerably good measure of the velocity of light 
had been made long before by means of the eclipses of 
Jupiter's moons and by observations upon the positions 
of the stars as influenced by the motion of the earth in 
its orbit. It was found to be approximately one hundred 
and eighty thousand miles per second, a speed so great 
that it seemed impossible that it should ever be measured 
by using only terrestrial distances. 

This extremely difficult problem has been solved, 
however, in a most satisfactory manner by nineteenth- 

315 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

century physicists. Everybody knows that in a uniform 
motion velocity is equal to space or distance divided by 
time. If, then, the time occupied in passing through a 
given distance can be measured, the velocity is *at once 
known. As the velocity of light is very large, unless 
the distance is enormously great, the time will be ex- 
tremely small, and if moderate distances are to be used 
the problem is to measure very small intervals of time 
very accurately. Light will travel one mile in about 
the one hundred and eighty-sixth thousandth part of a 
second, and if by using a mile as the distance the velocity 
of light is to be determined within one per cent., it is 
necessary to be able to detect differences of time as small 
as about one twenty-millionth of a second. This has 
been made possible by the use of two distinct methods. 
Foucault, on the suggestion of Arago, used a rapidly 
revolving mirror, a method introduced by Wheatstone, 
the English electrician, who used it in finding the dura- 
tion of an electric spark. The essential principle is that 
a mirror may be made to revolve so rapidly that it will 
change its position by a measurable angle, while light 
which has been reflected from it passes to a somewhat 
distant fixed mirror and returns to the moving reflector. 
In the other method a toothed wheel is revolved so rap- 
idly that a beam of light passing between two consecu- 
tive teeth to a distant fixed mirror is cut off on its return 
to the wheel by the tooth, which has moved forward 
while the light has made its journey. This method was 
first used by Fizeau. In either method, if the speed of 
rotation is known, the time is readily found. In point 
of time, Fizeau was the first to attack the problem, which 
he did about 1849. Foucault was perhaps a year later 
in getting results, but his method is generally consid- 
ered the best. Both methods have been used by other 
experimenters, and very important improvements in 
Foucault 's method were made in the United States by 

316 



PHYSICS 

Michelson about 1878. Michelson's method increased 
enormously the precision of the measurements, and it 
has been applied by him and by Newcomb, not only for 
the better determination of the velocity of light in air, but 
for the solution of many other related problems of first 
importance. Michelson's final determination of the ab- 
solute velocity of light (in the ether) is everywhere ac- 
cepted as authoritative. 

Another discovery in optics entirely accomplished 
during the nineteenth century and of the very first im- 
portance is generally known as "Spectrum Analysis." 
This discovery has not yet ceased to excite admiration 
and even amazement, and especially among those who 
best understand it. By its use hitherto unknown sub- 
stances have become known; to the physicist it is an 
instrument of research of the greatest power, and per- 
haps more than anything else it promises to throw light 
on the ultimate nature of matter; to the astronomer it 
has revealed the composition, physical condition, and 
even the motions of the most distant heavenly bodies, 
all of which the philosophy of a hundred years ago would 
have pronounced absolutely impossible. 

The beginning of spectrum analysis was in 1802, 
when an Englishman, Dr. Wollaston, observed dark 
lines interrupting the solar spectrum when produced by 
a good prism upon which the sunlight fell after passing 
through a narrow slit. About ten years later, Fraun- 
hofer, at Munich, a skilful worker in glass and a keen 
observer, discovered in the spectrum of light from a 
lamp two yellow bands, now known as the sodium, or 
"D" lines. Combining the three essential elements of 
the modern spectroscope, the slit, the prism, and the 
observing telescope, he saw in the spectrum of sunlight 
"an almost countless number of dark lines." He was 
the first to use a grating for the production of the spec- 
trum, using at first fine wire gratings and afterwards 

317 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ruling fine lines upon glass, and with these he made 
the first accurate measures of the length of light waves. 
He did not, however, comprehend the full import of the 
problem which he thus brought to the attention of phys- 
icists. About twenty years later Sir John Herschell 
studied the bright line spectra of different substances 
and found that they might be used to detect the presence 
of minute quantities of a substance whose spectrum was 
known. Wheatstone studied the spectrum of the elec- 
tric arc passing between metals, and in 1874 Dr. J. W. 
Draper published a very important paper on the spectra 
of solids with increasing temperature. Although quite 
in the dark as to the real nature of the phenomena with 
which they were dealing, these observers paved the way 
for the splendid work of the two Germans, Kirchoff and 
Bunsen, who, about i860, found the key to this wonder- 
ful problem and made the science of spectrum analysis 
substantially what it is to-day. Its fundamental prin- 
ciples may be considered as few and comparatively 
simple. 

Waves of light and radiant heat originate in ether 
disturbances produced by molecular vibration, and have 
impressed upon them all of the important qualities of 
that vibration. Molecules of different substances differ 
in their modes of vibration, each producing a wave pe- 
culiar to and characteristic of itself. A useful analogy 
may be found in the fact that when one listens to the 
music of an orchestra without seeing it it is easy to recog- 
nize the tones that come from each of the several instru- 
ments, the characteristic vibrations of each being im- 
pressed upon the waves in air which carry the sound to 
the ear. So delicate and so sure is this impression of 
vibration peculiarities that it is even possible to know 
the maker of a violin, for instance, by a characteristic 
timbre which must have its physical expression in the 
sound wave. The ear, more perfect than the eye, an- 

318 



PHYSICS 

alyzes the resultant disturbance into its component parts 
so that each element may be attributed to its proper 
source. Unaided, the eye cannot do this with light, 
but the spectroscope separates the various modes of vi- 
bration which make up the confused whole, so that va- 
rieties of molecular activity are recognizable. The speed 
at which a source of sound is approaching or receding 
from the ear can be ascertained by noting the rise or 
fall in pitch due to the crowding together or stretching 
out of the sound waves, and in the same way the motion 
of a luminous body is known from the increase or de- 
crease of the refrangibility of the elements of its spec- 
trum. 

Indeed, had nineteenth-century science accomplished 
nothing else than the discovery of spectrum analysis, 
it would have marked the beginning of a new epoch. 
By this device man is put in communication with every 
considerable body in the universe, including even the 
invisible. The "goings on" of Sirius and Algol, of 
Orion and the Pleiads are reported to him across enor- 
mous stretches of millions of millions of miles of space, 
empty save of the ethereal medium itself, by this most 
wonderful "wireless telegraphy." And it is by the vi- 
bratory motion of the invisibly small that all of this is 
revealed ; the infinitely little has enabled us to conquer 
the inconceivably big. 

Many important contributions to the theory and prac- 
tice of spectrum analysis have been made since the time 
of KirchofT and Bunsen, only two or three of which can 
be referred to here. Instrumental methods by which 
spectra are produced and examined have been greatly 
perfected, and this is especially true of what is known 
as the " diffraction grating " first used by Fraunhofer. 
A quarter of a century ago Rutherford, of New York, 
constructed a ruling engine by means of which gratings 
on glass and spectrum metal were ruled with a precision 

319 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

greatly exceeding what had before been possible. A 
few years later Rowland, of Baltimore, made a notable 
advance in the construction of a screw far more perfect 
than any before made, producing gratings of a fineness 
and regularity of spacing far ahead of any others, and 
especially by the capital discovery of the concave grating, 
by means of which the most beautiful results have been 
obtained. Very recently Michelson, of Chicago, has in- 
vented the echelon spectroscope, which, although greatly 
restricted in range, exceeds all others in power of analysis 
of spectral lines. In his hands this instrument has been 
most effective in the study of the influence of a strong 
magnetic field upon the character of the spectrum from 
light produced therein, a most interesting phenomenon 
first observed by Zeeman and one which promises to 
reveal much concerning the relation of molecular activ- 
ity to light and to magnetic force. 

The development of spectrum analysis was necessarily 
accompanied by a recognition of the identity of radiant 
heat and light. The study of radiant heat, which was 
carried on during the earlier years of the century by 
Leslie, and later by Melloni and Tyndall,by what might 
be called thermal methods, has been industriously pur- 
sued during the last two decades by processes similar 
to those adopted for visual radiation. The most notable 
contribution to this work is the invention of the bolom- 
eter, by Langley, who, at Allegheny, and later at Wash- 
ington, has made exhaustive studies of solar radiation 
in invisible regions of the spectrum, especially among 
the waves of greater length than those of red light, where 
he has found absorption lines and bands similar in charac- 
ter to those observed in the visible spectrum. He has 
also studied the absorption of the earth's atmosphere, 
the relation of energy to visual effect, and many other 
interesting problems, the solution of which was made 
possible by the use of the bolometer. 

320 



PHYSICS 

Mention must also be made of the invention by Michel- 
son of an interference comparator, by means of which 
linear measurements by optical methods can be accom- 
plished with a degree of accuracy hitherto unheard 
of. With this instrument Michelson has determined the 
length of the international prototype metre in terms of 
the wave length of the light of a particular spectral 
line, thus furnishing for the first time a satisfactory 
natural unit of length. 

By far the most important contribution to the theory 
of light made during the last half of the century is that 
of Maxwell, who, in 1873, announced the proposition 
that electro-magnetic phenomena and light phenomena 
have their origin in the same medium, and that they are 
identical in nature. This far-reaching conclusion has 
been generally accepted and formed the basis of much 
of the most important work in physical research in proc- 
ess of elaboration as the century closed. To some of this 
reference will presently be made. 

ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM 

In no other department of physical science have such 
remarkable developments occurred during the past cen- 
tury as in electricity and magnetism, for in no other 
department have the practical applications of scientific 
discovery been so numerous and so far reaching in their 
effect upon social conditions. In a brief review of the 
contributions of the nineteenth century to the evolution 
of the telegraph, telephone, trolley-car, electric lighting, 
and other means of utilizing electricity, it will be possible 
to consider only a very few of the fundamental discoveries 
upon which the enormous and rather complex super- 
structure of to-day rests. Happily these are few in 
number, and their presentation is all the more important 
because of the fact that in the popular mind they are 
x 321 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

not accorded that significance to which they are entitled, 
if, indeed, they are remembered at all. 

The first great step in advance of the electricity of 
Franklin and his contemporaries (and his predecessors 
for two thousand years) was taken very near the end of 
the eighteenth century, but it must be regarded as the be- 
ginning of nineteenth-century electricity. Two Italian 
philosophers, Galvani and Volta, contributed to the 
invention of what is known as the galvanic or voltaic 
battery, the output of which was not at first distinctly 
recognized as the electricity of the older schools. By 
this beautiful discovery electricity was for the first time 
enslaved to man, who was now able to generate and 
control it at times and in such quantities as he desired. 
Although the voltaic battery is now nearly obsolete 
as a source of electricity, its invention must always be 
regarded as one of the three epoch-making events in the 
history of the science during the past one hundred and 
twenty years. For three-quarters of a century it was 
practically the only source of electricity, and during this 
time and by its use nearly all of the most important dis- 
coveries were made. Even in the first decade of the 
century many brilliant results were reached. Among 
the most notable were the researches of Sir Humphry 
Davy, who, by the use of the most powerful battery then 
constructed, resolved the hitherto unyielding alkalies, 
discovering sodium and potassium, and at the same 
time exhibited in his lectures in the Royal Institution in 
London the first electric arc light, the ancestor of the 
millions that now turn night into day. 

The cost of generating electricity by means of a voltaic 
battery is relatively very great, and this fact stood in 
the way of the early development of its applications, 
although their feasibility was perfectly well under- 
stood. Without any other important invention or dis- 
covery than that of the voltaic battery much would have 

322 



PHYSICS 

been possible, including both electric lighting and the 
electric telegraph. Indeed, electric telegraphy had long 
been a possibility, even before the time of Galvani and 
Volta, but its actual construction and use was almost 
necessarily postponed until a second capital discovery 
came to remove most of the difficulties. 

This was the discovery of a relation between electricity 
and magnetism, the existence of which had long been 
suspected and earnestly sought. A Danish professor, 
Hans Christian Oersted, was fortunate in hitting upon 
an experiment which demonstrated this relation and 
opened up an entirely new field of investigation and 
invention. What Oersted found was that when a con- 
ductor, as a copper wire, carrying an electric current, 
was brought near a freely suspended magnet, like a 
compass needle, the latter would take up a definite posi- 
tion with reference to the current. Thus an electric 
current moved a magnet, acted like a magnet in pro- 
ducing a "magnetic field." The subject was quickly 
taken up by almost every physicist in Europe and Amer- 
ica. Arago found that iron filings would cling to a wire 
through which a current was passing, and he was able 
to magnetize steel needles by means of the current. 
Ampere, another French physicist, studied Oersted's 
wonderful discovery both experimentally and mathemat- 
ically, and in an incredibly short time so developed it 
as to deserve the title of creator of the science of electro- 
dynamics. 

The first to make what is known as an electro-magnet 
was an Englishman named Sturgeon, who used a bar 
of soft iron bent in a horseshoe form (as had long been 
common in making permanent steel magnets), and, 
after varnishing the iron for insulation, a single coil of 
copper wire was wrapped about it, through which the 
current from a battery was passed. There were thus 
two ways of producing visible motion by means of an 

323 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

electric current : that of Oersted's simple experiment, in 
which a suspended magnetic needle was deflected by a 
current, and that made possible by the production, at 
will, of an electro-magnet. The application of both of 
these ideas to the construction of an electric telegraph 
was quickly attempted, and two different systems of 
telegraphy grew out of them. One, depending on Oer- 
sted's experiment, was developed in England first and 
afterwards in Europe ; the other, that involving the use 
of signals produced b}^ an electric magnet, was developed 
in America, and was generally known as the American 
method. It has long ago superseded the first method 
in actual practice. Its possibility depended on perfect- 
ing the electro-magnet and especially on an under- 
standing of the principles on which that perfecting de- 
pended. For the complete and satisfactory solution of 
this problem we are indebted to the most famous student 
of electric^ America has produced during the century, 
Joseph Henry. In 1829, while a teacher in the academy 
at Albany, New York, Henry exhibited an electro-mag- 
net of enormously greater power than any before made, 
involving all of the essential features of the magnet of 
to-day. The wire was insulated bj' silk wrapping, and 
many coils were placed upon the iron core, the intensity 
of magnetization being thus multiplied. Henry studied, 
also, the best form and arrangement of the battery under 
varying conditions of the conductor. An electro-mag- 
netic telegraph had been declared impossible in 1825, 
by Barlow, an Englishman, who pointed out the ap- 
parently fatal fact that the resistance offered to the 
current was proportional to the length of the conducting 
wire and that the strength of the current would be thus 
so much reduced for even short distances as to become 
too feeble to be detected. Henry showed that what is 
known as an "intensity battery" would overcome this 
difficulty, discovering experimentally and independently 

324 



PHYSICS 

the beautifully simple law showing the relation of current 
to electro-motive force which Ohm had announced in 
1827. He also invented the principle of the relay, by 
which the action of a very feeble current controls the 
operation of a more powerful local system. It will thus 
be seen that the essential features of the so-called Amer- 
ican system of telegraphy are to be credited to Henry, 
who had a working line in his laboratory as early as 
1832. 

Morse made use of the scientific discoveries and in- 
ventions of Henry, and by his indefatigable labors and 
persistent faith the commercial value of the enterprise 
was really established. In the mean time considerable 
progress was made in Europe. Baron Schilling, a 
Russian Councillor of State, devised and exhibited a 
needle telegraph. The two illustrious German physi- 
cists, Gauss and Weber, established a successfully work- 
ing line two or three miles long in 1833, and this system 
was commercially developed by Stein heil in 1837. In 
England, Sir Charles Wheatstone made many impor- 
tant contributions, although using the needle system, 
which was afterwards abandoned. Before the middle of 
the century the commercial success of the electro-mag- 
netic telegraph was assured, and in the matter of the 
transmission of messages distance was practically anni- 
hilated. 

Oersted, Arago, Ampere, Sturgeon, and Henry had 
made it possible to convert electricity into mechanical 
energy. Motors of various types had been invented, 
and the possibility of using the new source of power for 
running machinery, cars, boats, etc., was fully recog- 
nized. Several attempts had been made to do these 
things, but the great cost of producing the current by 
means of a battery stood in the way of success. Another 
epoch-making discovery was necessary, namely, a meth- 
od of reversing the process and converting mechanical 

325 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

energy into electricity. This was supplied by the gen- 
ius of Michael Faraday, who had succeeded Davy in 
the Royal Institution at London. In 183 1 Faraday dis- 
covered induction, the key to the modern development 
of electricity. He showed that while Oersted had proved 
that a current of electricity would generate a magnetic 
field and set a magnet in motion, this process was re- 
versible. A magnet set in motion in a magnetic field 
by a steam-engine or any other source of power would 
produce, in a conductor properly arranged, a current of 
electricity, and thus the dynamo came into existence. 
In this brilliant investigation he was almost anticipated 
by Henry, who was working at Albany along the same 
lines, but under much less favorable conditions. In- 
deed, in several of the most important points, the Ameri- 
can actually did anticipate the Englishman. Nearly 
half a century elapsed before this most important dis- 
covery was sufficiently developed to become commercially 
valuable, and it is impossible in this place to trace the 
steps by which, during the last quarter of a century, 
the production and utilization of electricity as existing 
to-day was accomplished, as a result of which the cen- 
tury closed, as one might say, in a blaze of light; and 
it is unnecessary, because most people have witnessed 
the spread of the fire which Faraday and Henry kindled. 
Faraday's discovery of induction furnished the basis of 
that marvellous improvement upon the telegraph by 
which actual speech is transmitted over hundreds and 
even thousands of miles. In connection with the in- 
vention of the telephone the names of Philip Reiss, Gra- 
ham Bell, Elisha Gray, and Dolbear will always be 
mentioned, each of whom, doubtless independently, hit 
upon a way of accomplishing the result with more or less 
success. To Bell, however, belongs the honor of having 
first practically solved the problem and of devising a 
system which, with numerous modifications and im- 

326 



PHYSICS 

provements, has come into extensive use in all parts of 
the world. No other application of electricity has come 
into such universal use, and none has contributed more 
to the comfort of life. 

While it is doubtless true that since Faraday's time 
no discovery comparable with his in real importance 
has been made, the past twenty-five years have not lacked 
in results of scientific research, some of which may, in the 
not distant future, eclipse even that in the value of their 
practical applications. Among these must be ranked 
Clerk Maxwell's theory of electric waves and its beauti- 
ful verification in 1888 by the young German physicist, 
Hertz. This brilliant student of electricity succeeded 
in actually producing, detecting, and controlling these 
waves, and out of this discovery has come the " wireless 
telegraphy " which has been so rapidly developed within 
the last few years. Many other discoveries in electricity 
of great scientific interest and practical promise have 
been recorded in the closing years of the century, but 
the necessary limits of this article forbid their consider- 
ation. 

No account of the progress of physical science during 
the nineteenth century would be even approximately 
complete without mention of other investigations of pro- 
found significance. For instance, the study of the phe- 
nomena of sound has yielded results of great scientific 
and some practical value. The application of the the- 
ory of interference by Thomas Young; the publication 
of Helmholtz's great work, the Tonempfindungen, in 
which his theory of harmony was first fully presented; 
the publication of Lord Rajdeigh's treatise ; the invention 
and construction by Konig of acoustic apparatus, the 
best example yet furnished of scientific handicraft ; all 
of these mark important advances, not only in acoustics 
but in general physics as well. The phonautograph of 
Scott and Konig, by which a graphic record of the vi- 

327 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

brations of the vocal chords was made possible, was 
ingeniously converted bj- Edison into a speech recording 
and reproducing machine, the phonograph, by which 
the most marvellous results are accomplished in the sim- 
plest possible manner. 

The century is also to be credited with the discovery 
and development of the art of photography, which, al- 
though not of the first importance, has contributed much 
to the pleasure of life, and as an aid to scientific investi- 
gation has become quite indispensable. 

The wonderfully beautiful experiments of Sir William 
Crookes, on the passage of an electric discharge through 
a high vacuum, and other phenomena connected with 
what has been called "radiant matter," begun about a 
quarter of a century ago and continued by him and 
others up to the present time, laid the foundation for the 
brilliant work of Rontgen in the discovery and study 
of the so-called "X"-rays, the real nature of which is 
not yet understood. Their further investigation by 
J. J. Thomson, Becquerel, and others, seems to have 
revealed new forms and phases of radiation, a fuller 
knowledge of which is likely to throw much light on ob- 
scure problems relating to the nature of matter. 

Concerning the "Nature of Matter," the ablest physi- 
cists of the century have thought and written much, and 
doubtless our present knowledge of the subject is much 
more nearly the truth than that of a hundred years ago. 
The molecular theory of gases has met with such com- 
plete experimental verification, and is so in accord with 
all observed phenomena, that it must be accepted as es- 
sentially correct. As to the ultimate nature of what 
is called matter, as distinguished from the ethereal me- 
dium, what is known as the "vortex theory of atoms" 
has received the most consideration. This theory was 
developed by Lord Kelvin out of Helmholtz's mathe- 
matical demonstration of the indestructibility of a vor- 

328 



PHYSICS 

tex ring when once formed in a medium possessing the 
properties which are generally attributed to the ether. 

Perhaps the most remarkable as well as the most prom- 
ising fact relating to physical science at the close of the 
nineteenth century is the great and rapidly increasing 
number of well-organized and splendidly equipped lab- 
oratories in which original research is systematically 
planned and carried out. When one reflects that for 
the most part during the century just ended the ad- 
vance of science was more or less of the nature of a guer- 
rilla warfare against ignorance, it seems safe to predict 
for that just beginning victories more glorious than any 
yet won. 

T. C. MENDENHALL. 



WAR 



WAR 



T T is doubtful how far, even if as civilians we get over 
*■ our natural dislike of talking of military change as 
"progress/' there has been any considerable advance in 
the larger aspects of military science within the century. 
The genius of Bonaparte, working upon the foundations 
laid by Frederick the Great, established a century ago 
principles which are essentially applicable to the military 
matters of the present day; and although the scientific 
developments of artillery and musketry have affected the 
dispositions of battle-fields, the essential principles of the 
art of preparation for war and of strategy stand where 
they stood before. 

Scharnhorst was the Prussian officer who began to 
reduce the Napoleonic military system to rules applica- 
ble to the use of German armies. Under Bonaparte the 
whole management of the army was too often concen- 
trated in the hands of the man of genius, and the actual 
method of Napoleon had the defect that, failing the man 
of genius at the head of the army, it broke down. The 
main change made by the Germans, who followed Scharn- 
horst, in the course of the century has been to codify 
the Napoleonic system so that it was possible to more 
generally decentralize in practice without impairing its 
essence. They have also established a division of its 
supply department (under a Minister of War) from the 
" brain of the army," as Mr. Spenser Wilkinson has well 
called it, which manages the preparation for the strategy 
of war and the strategy itself. These so-called Prussian 

333 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

principles of decentralization and "initiative" are, how- 
ever, not new and not Prussian, and may be discovered 
in the conversations of Napoleon Bonaparte. The 
French in 1870 had forgotten his teaching, and the Ger- 
mans had retained it. It is, nevertheless, the case that 
the number of men placed in the field by the military 
powers having increased, the intelligent initiative of 
corps commanders and even of generals commanding 
divisions has become the more essential. It is impos- 
sible that the great general staff can give orders in ad- 
vance which will cover the responsibility of all the in- 
ferior generals, and brains have to be added in all ranks 
to obedience. The commander-in-chief in the field can- 
not with advantage drown himself in details, and he can 
only provide in his orders an outline sketch which his 
subordinates in various parts of the field of operations 
have to fill in. The "initiative of subordinates" is but 
the natural division of labor. 

If I, a civilian student of military politics, rather than 
a military expert, have been called upon to write upon 
the military progress of the century, it must be because 
of a desire to bring largely into the account the changes 
in military organization which on the continent of Eu- 
rope have made it permanently national, and which in 
the United States made it temporarily national during 
the Civil War, and would make it so again in the event 
of any fresh struggle on a great scale in which the 
North American continent might become involved. 

Although the " armed nation " has replaced in France, 
Germany, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Rou- 
mania, and Bulgaria the smaller professional armies 
of the eighteenth century, the popular belief that the nu- 
merical strength of field armies has enormously increased 
is not so completely well founded as at first sight might 
be supposed. It is true that each nation can put into 
the entire field of warfare larger numbers than that 

334 



WAR 

nation could put into the field a century ago. But it is 
still not beyond the bounds of possibility that in certain 
cases small armies may produce results as remarkable 
as those which attended British operations in the Penin- 
sula in the early part of the nineteenth century, and, 
on the other hand, although there will, upon the whole, 
in future continental wars, be larger armies in the field, 
no one general is likely personally to handle or to 
place upon a field of battle a larger army than that with 
which Napoleon traversed Europe before he invaded 
Russia. 

The principles of pure military science as set forth in 
books have not been greatly changed during the nine- 
teenth century. The Prussian Clausewitz only ex- 
plained for us the doctrines of Bonaparte ; and the latest 
writers — such as the Frenchmen Derrecagaix and Le- 
wal — only continue Clausewitz. The theory of the 
armed nation has received extension, but, after all, the 
Prussian system in its essentials dates from Jena, 
and the steps by which it has produced the admirable 
existing armies of France, Austria, and Roumania have 
been but slow. 

The United States stand apart. Their resources are 
so fabulously great that they and they alone are able 
to wait for war before making war preparations. No 
power will attack the United States. All powers will 
submit to many things and yield many strong points 
rather than fight the United States. The only terri- 
torial neighbors of the republic are not only not in a 
position to enter into military rivalry with her on the 
American continent, but are not advancing their mili- 
tary establishments with the growth of their or of her 
population. They are of themselves not only unable 
to attack, but equally unable in the long run effectively 
to resist her. 

The whole question, then, unfortunately for us Euro- 

335 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

peans, is a European question, and I need make but little 
reference to happier lands across the greater seas. 

In Europe the United Kingdom stands absolutely 
apart. The existence of the British Empire depends 
less upon our armies than on our fleets. India is 
garrisoned by a small but costly army, sufficient for 
present needs, but insufficient to meet their probable 
growth. The home army, kept mainly in England and 
Ireland (and in Ireland now only because life is cheap 
in Ireland and the country healthy and well fitted for 
the drill and discipline of troops), has been chiefly a 
nursery for the white army in India, and will be for that 
in South Africa and in India. The expeditions which 
the country is obliged to send from time to time across the 
seas have but a domestic interest, and are unimportant 
when viewed from a world-wide military stand-point. In 
the event of war the attention of the country would be 
concentrated upon her fleets, with a view to retain that 
command of the sea without which her old - fashioned 
army would be useless. 

Belgium has an old-fashioned army of another type. 
A small force of conscripts is "drawn," and the men are 
allowed to find substitutes for money. But Belgium 
and the other smaller Powers, except Switzerland, Rou- 
mania, and Bulgaria, may be neglected in our survey. 
Switzerland has developed an excellent army of a special 
local type, a cheap but highly efficient militia, the most 
interesting point about which is that, while field artillery 
is supposed to be difficult of creation and only to be ob- 
tained upon a costly and regular system, Switzerland 
produces an excellent field artillery upon a militia foot- 
ing. The garrison artillery militia of Great Britain have 
longer training than the field artillery of the Swiss Fed- 
eration, but the results of the training are very different. 
Similarly, while cavalry is supposed to be in the same 
position as artillery in these matters, Hungary produces 

336 



WAR 

a good cavalry upon a militia system. It is, however, 
to the native army in India that we have to turn if we 
want to see what long service cavalry in past centuries 
used to be, for in these days of shorter service cavalry 
at least has suffered a decline, and, so far from cavalry, 
on the whole, presenting us with a picture of military 
progress in the century, the cavalry of the present day 
is not to be compared with the cavalry of the past. Rou- 
mania and Bulgaria, although small countries, have 
remarkable armies of the most modern type, of great 
strength when considered proportionately to their popu- 
lations; but these need not come under our examina- 
tion, because substantially they are on the Prussian 
plan. 

Russia differs from Germany, France, and Austria in 
having an immense peace army. Her peace army is 
indeed as large as that of the whole of the Triple Alliance, 
and the enormous distances of Russia and the difficulties 
of mobilization and concentration force her into the 
retention and development of a system which is now 
peculiar to herself. The armies of Russia resemble 
more closely (although on a far larger scale) the old 
armies of the time before the changes which followed 
1866 than the French, German, and Austrian armies of 
to-day. Italy is decreasing her army, and has been 
driven by her financial straits to completely spoil a sys- 
tem which was never good except on paper. It is doubt- 
ful whether now in a sudden war the Italians could put 
into the field any thoroughly good troops, except their 
Alpine battalions, which are equal to those of the French. 
The Austrian system does not differ sufficiently from 
those of Germany and of France to be worthy special 
note, although it may be said in passing that the 
Austrian army is now considered by competent ob- 
servers to be excellent. We may take as our type of 
the armies of to-day those of Germany and of France. 
Y 337 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

These armies are also normal as regards their cost. 
Great Britain having no conscription, and being in the 
habit of paying dearly for all services, is extravagant in 
her military expenditure for the results obtained. Switz- 
erland and Russia, with their different systems, and for 
different reasons, obtain their armies very cheaply ; and 
if we wish to know the cost of the modern military 
system it is to Germany and to France that we should 
turn. 

Those who would study the French or German army 
for themselves will find a large literature on the subject. 
The principles which govern the establishment of an 
armed nation upon the modern Prussian scale, improved 
after the experiences of 1866 and again after those of 
1870, are explained in the work of Von der Goltz, The 
Nation in Arms. Those who would follow these prin- 
ciples into their detailed application, and see how the 
armies are divided between, and nourished and supplied 
from the military districts of one of the great countries, 
will find the facts set forth in such publications as the 
illustrated Annual of the French Army, published 
each year by Plon, Nourrit, et Cie., or in the official 
handbooks published by the Librairie Militaire Baudoin. 

In the time of Bonaparte and even in the time of the 
Second Empire in France army corps were of varying 
strength, and there was no certain knowledge on the 
part of administrators less admirable than the first 
Napoleon himself of the exact numbers of men who 
could be placed in the field. In 1870 Louis Napoleon 
was wholly misinformed as to his own strength and as 
to that of his opponents, which were, however, accurately 
known to Von Moltke. In these days such confusions 
and difficulties are impossible. The army corps of the 
great military powers are of equal strength and would 
be equally reinforced in the extraordinarily rapid mobil- 
ization which would immediately precede and immediately 

338 



WAR 

follow a declaration of war. The chief changes in the 
century have been a greater exactitude in these respects, 
a general increase of numbers (especially a great increase 
in the strength of field artillery), and in these last years 
a grouping of the army corps into armies, which exist 
in Germany, France, and Russia even in time of peace, 
with all their generals and staffs named ready for war. 
In each of the great military countries the army is guided 
by the counsel of a general staff. Around the chief of 
the staff and the Minister of War are the "generals of 
armies," and in France a potential generalissimo (who 
on the outbreak of war would often be superseded by 
another general in the actual command). In the case 
of Germany the command would now be exercised by 
the young Emperor. In the case of France it would 
be exercised by the generalissimo, with the chief of the 
staff as his " Berthier " or major - general. Enormously 
important duties in the case of armies so unwieldy as 
the entire forces of the first line and of the second line in 
Germany or France and of the first line in Russia would 
be exercised by the "generals of armies." These gen- 
erals in time of peace are called "inspectors of armies" 
in France, Germany, and Austria, and they inspect 
groups of army corps which would be united in war to 
form the armies which these generals would actually 
command. These generals also form the council of 
war or principal promotion board and committee of 
advice for the generalissimo and chief of the staff. In 
Germany and in Austria-Hungary the German Em- 
peror and the Emperor-King respectively are virtual 
general inspectors-in-chief of the whole army, but in 
France and in Russia there is less unity of command. 
The Minister of War in Russia, in Germany, and in 
France is intended to be at the head of the supplies of 
the army in time of war, directing the administration 
from the capital, and not taking his place in the field. 

339 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

The Prussian system, as far as the men are concerned, 
was adopted after the disasters of Prussia early in the 
century, in order to pass great numbers of men through 
the ranks without attracting attention by keeping up 
a large peace army. The system is now maintained 
by Germany, Austria, and France for a different reason. 
Such powers desire to have an enormous force for war, 
but, for budgetary reasons, to keep with the flag in time 
of peace the smallest force which is consistent with train- 
ing the men sufficiently to enable them upon mobiliza- 
tion to be brought back to their regiments as real soldiers. 
It is these considerations which have induced the younger 
and more thoughtful of the Prussian generals to force 
on Germany a reduction of the period of infantry service 
to two years. The army in time of peace becomes a 
mere training-school for war, and the service is made 
as short as possible, given the necessity of turning out 
a man who for some years will continue to have the 
traditions of a soldier. It is a question whether some- 
thing has not been sacrificed, in France, at all events, 
to uniformity. A longer period of training is undoubt- 
edly necessary to make an efficient cavalry soldier than 
is necessary to make an efficient infantry private; and 
a man who has served about two and a half years only 
in a cavalry regiment cannot in the majority of cases be 
brought back into the cavalry after he has returned to 
civil life. Cavalry, in the modern armies, is likely to be 
a diminishing force as war goes on. The armies will 
enter upon war with a number of infantry which can be 
kept up, the losses of war being supplied by reserve 
men as good as the men of the first line ; but each army 
will enter upon -war with a force of cavalry which will be 
rapidly destroyed if it is much used, and which will not 
be replaced in the same manner. The reserve cavalry 
of which the French press boasts is a paper force, and the 
pretended mobilization of two of its regiments a farce. 

340 



WAR 

The French would take the field with the cavalry of the 
first line only, seventy-nine regiments of five hundred 
horses (all over six years old), or less than half the eighty- 
four thousand cavalry with which Napoleon marched 
in 1812. The same thing might possibly be said of ar- 
tillery as is said of cavalry but for the fact that Switzer- 
land tells a different story as to the possibility of rapidly 
training artillerymen with a considerable measure of 
success. The French improvised artillery of the latter 
part of the war of 1870 were also a creditable force, while 
it was discovered to be impossible to create a cavalry. 

The efficiency of the reserves in France, Germany, 
and Austria is tested by the calling out of large portions 
of them every year for training, and they are found, as 
far as the infantry go, thoroughly competent for the 
work of war. The difficulties as regards cavalry are 
so obvious that it is becoming more and more recognized 
by Germany and by France that the cavalry will have 
to take the field as they stand in peace, and that their 
reserve men will have to be kept back with a view to 
the selection among them of those who are fit to serve 
as cavalry, and the relegation of the greater number 
to the train and other services where ability to ride and 
manage horses is more necessary than the smartness of 
a good cavalryman. France and Germany nominally 
look forward to the creation of two kinds of armies in 
time of war, one of the first line to take the field at once, 
and the other to guard the communications and garrison 
and support the fortresses, but in fact it is the intention 
of these powers to divide their armies into three — a 
field army of the first line, a field army of the second 
line, out of which fresh army corps will at once be created 
on the outbreak of war, and, thirdly, a territorial army 
for communications and for fortress purposes and as a 
last reserve. It is a portion of the French and German 
system that each army corps of the first line — and the 

341 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

same would be the case in war with the second line corps 
— has its separate organization of ammunition train 
and baggage train, and draws as largely as possible its 
supplies from its own territorial district. 

The peace strength of the great modern armies is for 
France and Germany about five hundred thousand men 
each, and the war strength between four million and five 
million men each. The peace strength of Russia is now 
over nine hundred thousand men. Of the war armies 
the training is not uniformly complete, but there are in 
Germany, France, Austria, and Roumania sufficient re- 
serves of clothing and rifles to equip the war armies of 
those powers for the field. 

The cost of the system of a modern army is very much 
less than that of the old-fashioned armies. The United 
Kingdom spent till lately (including loan money) about 
eighteen million pounds sterling upon her army, India 
rarely less than fourteen million pounds sterling and an 
average of fifteen million pounds, and the British Em- 
pire, outside the United Kingdom and India, two mill- 
ion pounds, or an average of thirty - five million pounds 
sterling in all upon land forces. The expenditure of 
the United Kingdom upon land forces has been per- 
manently increased to an enormous extent by the South 
African war and cannot now be estimated. The ex- 
penditure of France and Germany upon land forces is 
greatly less ; and of Russia, large as is her peace army, 
less again. But France and Germany in the event of 
war can immediately each of them place millions of armed 
men in the field in proper army formation and with 
adequate command, whereas the United Kingdom can 
place a doubtful three corps in the field in India with 
great difficulty, and, in the true sense of the word, no 
organized force at all at home without an incredible 
amount of reorganization and waste of time after the 
declaration of war. It is contended by the authorities 

342 



WAR 

responsible for the British army that two army corps 
could be placed in the field at home, and elaborate paper 
arrangements exist for this purpose ; but the facts are as 
I state them, and not as they are professed to be. It is 
pretended that three corps of regulars were despatched 
to South Africa. But the cavalry and artillery were, in 
fact, created by lavish expenditure a long time after 
the war had begun and after disasters caused by their 
non-existence. 

Centralized as is the administrative system of France 
and Germany in everything except war, the necessities 
of modern warfare have forced upon the governments 
of those countries a large amount of decentralization 
as concerns military matters, and the less efficient military 
machines of the United Kingdom and of Russia are far 
more centralized than are the more efficient machines 
of Germany and of France. The army corps districts 
have in the latter countries so much autonomy as to 
recall to the political student the federal organization 
of the United States rather than the government of a 
highly centralized modern power. As soon, however, as 
war breaks out, the military states of time of peace would 
be grouped, and the four or five groups known as " ar- 
mies," also, of course, theoretically, brought together un- 
der the directing eye of the generalissimo. In the case, 
at all events, of Germany, unity of direction is perfectly 
combined with decentralization and individual initiative. 

The mode in which a modern army on the anticipation 
of war prepares itself for the field is extraordinarily rapid 
in point of time as compared with the mode found neces- 
sary in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte; and it is this 
rapidity of mobilization and concentration which strikes 
the observer as the greatest change or progress of the 
century in connection with armies. But it is a mere 
consequence of railroads and telegraphs, and is only 
the application to military purposes of those increased 

343 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

facilities of locomotion which have played so great a 
part in the progress of the century. Mobilization is, 
of course, the union at points fixed beforehand of the men 
of the reserves who bring the army up to its war footing, 
and the clothing and equipment of these men, and the 
distribution to the mobilized regiments of their full 
materials of war. The cavalry and horse artillery kept 
upon the frontier are now in a condition of permanent 
readiness in the principal military countries, as they 
would be used to cover the mobilization of the remainder 
of the army. The moment mobilization is accomplished 
concentration takes place — on the frontier in the case of 
the principal powers. Near the line of concentration 
are forts, which play a greater part in the French scheme 
of defence than they do in the German. The French 
in the days of their weakness after 1870 both constructed 
a line of intrenched camps and built a kind of wall of 
China along the most exposed portion of their eastern 
frontier ; whereas the Germans are prepared to rely upon 
their field armies, supported by a few immense fortresses, 
such as those (on their western frontier) of Metz and 
Strasburg. The French keep in front of their fortresses 
at Nancy a strong division, which is virtually always 
on a war footing, and both in France and Germany 
the frontier corps are at a higher peace strength than 
those of the interior, and are meant to take the field at 
once so as to help the cavalry and horse artillery to pro- 
tect the mobilization and concentration of the remainder, 
and, if possible, to disturb the mobilization and con- 
centration of the foe. Those who would study modern 
armies for themselves should visit Nancy and Metz, 
but should not neglect the Swiss annual manoeuvres. 

The work of the recruit of Germany and of France, 
during his two years' or nearly three years' training as 
the case may be, is as hard as any human work ; and the 
populations of the continental countries submit, not on 

344 



WAR 

the whole unwillingly, from patriotic motives, to a slavery 
of which the more fortunate inhabitants of the United 
Kingdom and of the United States have no conception. 
The British or the Belgian paid recruit would mutiny 
if forced to work as works the virtually unpaid and ill- 
fed recruit of Russia, Germany, Austria, and France. 
The enormous loss to many industries which is caused 
by the withdrawal of the men at the age of twenty, just 
when they are most apt to become skilled workmen, 
is in the opinion of some Germans compensated for by 
the habit of discipline and the moral tone of stiffness 
and endurance which is communicated to the soldier for 
the rest of his life. This is perhaps more true of the 
German character than it is of the inhabitants of the 
other countries ; and in France, at least, the soldier train- 
ing of the entire population is a heavy drawback to in- 
dustrial and to intellectual life. There are, however, 
as will be seen in the concluding passage of this article, 
other considerations to be taken into account, some 
of which tell the other way. 

The one successful exception to the prevailing mili- 
tary system of the day is to be found in Switzerland, 
which has a very cheap army of the militia type, but 
one which is, nevertheless, pronounced efficient by the 
best judges. The mobilization of Switzerland in 1870 
was more rapid than that of either Germany or France, 
and, great as are the strides that both France and Ger- 
many have made in rapidity of organization and as re- 
gards numbers since 1870, the Swiss also have reorgan- 
ized their mobilization system since that time, and are 
still able, at a much less proportional cost, to place in 
the field at least as large a proportional force as Ger- 
many, and this force believed to be efficient, although 
not largely provided with cavalry. 

The greatest change in the battle-fields of the future, 
as compared with those of a few years ago, will be found 

345 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

in the development and increased strength of the artil- 
lery. A modern army, when it takes up a position, has 
miles of front almost entirely occupied with guns, and 
the guns have to fire over the infantry, because there is 
no room for such numbers of guns to be used in any other 
way. The attacking side (if both, indeed, in one form 
or another, do not attempt attack) will be chiefly occu- 
pied in obtaining positions on which to place its guns, 
and the repeating-rifle itself, deadly as is its fire, cannot 
contend at ranges over a thousand yards, unless the 
riflemen are heavily intrenched, with the improved 
shrapnel fire of modern guns. The early engagements 
of a war will, indeed, be engagements of cavalry massed 
upon the frontier on the second day of mobilization, so 
rapid will the opening of war in the future be. This 
cavalry will be accompanied by horse artillery and fol- 
lowed by light infantry, constantly practised in rapid 
marching in time of peace, or by mounted infantry. But 
the great battle-fields of the later weeks will be battle- 
fields, above all, of artillery. The numbers engaged 
will be so great that the heaviest of all the responsibili- 
ties of the generals will be the feeding of their troops 
during the battles prolonged during several days, which 
will probably occur, and it is doubtful how far the old 
generals (often grown unwieldy in time of peace) will be 
able to stand the daily and nightly strain of war. Jo- 
mini has said that when both sides are equally strong 
in numbers, in courage, and in many other elements of 
force, the great tragedy of Borodino is the typical battle. 
Lewal has pointed out that in the battles of the future 
such equality must be expected : " The battle will begin 
on the outbreak of war in the operations of the frontier 
regiments. The great masses as they come to the field 
will pour into a fight already raging. The battle will 
be immense and prolonged." Promotion will probably 
be rapid among the generals, owing to incompetence and 

346 



WAR 

retirement, and certainly among other officers owing to 
their exposure in these days of smokeless powder, when 
good shots can pick off officers in a manner unknown 
in wars which have hitherto occurred. Whether it will 
be possible to get armies to advance under heavy fire 
after the officers have been killed is doubtful, when we 
remember that modern armies consist of the whole pop- 
ulation, cowards and brave men alike, and that regimen- 
tal cohesion is weakened by the sudden infusion of an 
overwhelming proportion of reserve men at the last mo- 
ment. On the other hand, in the German army the re- 
serve men will be fewer in the first line than in the French, 
and the regimental system more available in the field, 
while on the French side the greater military aptitude 
of the French race may perhaps be counted upon to rem- 
edy the comparative defect. The Prussians make up 
for the inferior military aptitude of the German people 
by patriotism, discipline, and the conferring of honor 
and of civil employment, in after life, on all who do their 
duty in war. They also provide more effectively than 
do the French against incapacity in high place. Above 
all, however, we should attach importance to the wisdom 
of successive Kings of Prussia in treating the Prussian 
army as an almost sacred institution, and in constantly 
working in time of peace to make it and keep it a perfect 
instrument of war. 

The weakest point, relatively speaking, in the French 
organization, and the strongest point, relatively speak- 
ing, in the German, is the officering of the second and 
third line. The one-year-volunteer system gives the 
Germans excellent " territorial " officers, while the French 
have been forced virtually to abolish it as impossible of 
successful application in a country so jealous of privilege 
as is modern France. The territorial infantry regiments 
of France would be excellent for the defence of fortresses, 
but would for field purposes be inferior to that part of the 

347 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Prussian landwehr which would remain over after the 
completion of the reserve corps. The reserve cavalry 
regiments of France have been created in order to pro- 
vide promotion and sinecure appointments, and would 
not produce a cavalry fit for true cavalry service in the 
field. It would carry us beyond the proper limits of this 
article to explain how it is that the French could create 
a field artillery of the second line in time of war which 
would probably be superior to that of Germany. This 
forms a set-off against some other inferiority of the French. 

The newest point in the development of modern armies 
is the recent separation in the German army of the cav- 
alry intended for patrol duties from the cavalry intended 
for fighting in the field. We have had to face the same 
problem in South Africa, but this condition of our war 
was peculiar. 

It has been said that the history of warfare is the history 
of the struggle among weapons, and that each change 
in tactics and even in strategy has come from scientific 
change affecting weapons. In the century we have seen 
the change from the smooth-bore to the rifle and from 
the ordinary to the repeating rifle. We have seen the 
modifications of artillery, which are beginning to give an 
application of the quick-firing principle to field artillery, 
and the use of high explosive shells, likely to affect by 
their explosion even those who are near the bursting shell 
and who are not struck by its fragments. Smokeless 
powder has altered the look of battles and has reduced 
their noise. It provides excuse for the incompetent. It 
would be easy, however, to exaggerate the importance 
of these changes as regards tactics, and still more with 
regard to strategy, while with tactics we are not here 
concerned. The great continental military nations have 
hitherto not allowed themselves to be much affected by 
the changes in the weapons, and many of the modern 
fads which are adopted in small armies are condemned 

348 



WAR 

by the leaders of these great forces. The British ma- 
chine guns, for example, like British mounted infantry, 
are generally regarded on the continent as a fancy of 
our own. All nations have their military fads, except, 
perhaps, the severely practical Germans. Russia has 
its dragoon organization, from which it is receding; 
America has her dynamite gun; the French have their 
submarine torpedo-boats. Our machine guns are not 
thought much more of by most Prussians than the steam- 
gun of 1844, ridiculed by Dickens in Martin Chuzzleivit. 
If great change was to have been made in the art of war 
by modern weapons, one would have thought that the 
first things to disappear would be all vestige of protective 
armor and the use of cavalry in the field. Yet protective 
armor has been recently restored to as large a proportion 
of many armies as used it in the wars of the beginning of 
the century, and the use of cavalry in the field is defended 
as still possible by all the highest authorities on the con- 
tinent. My own opinion on such matters is that of a 
layman and should be worthless, but it agrees with that 
of several distinguished military writers. I confess that 
I doubt whether in future wars between good armies, 
such as those of France and Germany, it will be possible 
to employ cavalry on the field of battle, and I go so far as 
to think that the direct offensive, still believed in by the 
Prussians, will be found to have become too costly to be 
possible. Our South African experience is not, how- 
ever, regarded by continental authorities as conclusive. 
The author of Ironclads in Action, Mr. Wilson, who 
has made a very thorough study of the future of naval 
war, has pointed out with great force the most strik- 
ing difficulties of war in the future as caused by the 
enormous concentration of forces in a particular tract 
of country. The result of that concentration must be 
great difficulties about supply, prolonged battles of an 
indecisive kind leading to exposure, absence of sleep, 

349 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

and to conditions which would form the severest strain 
for professional men of war, while those who will now be 
subject to them will be the ordinary population, not very 
specially warriors, except so far as patriotism may in 
some cases make up as regards courage and endurance 
for absence of military tradition. The vast number of 
wounded will be exposed for longer periods than was the 
case in many of the earlier wars ; but when we remember 
Leipsic, and Dresden, and the retreat from Moscow, it is 
again easy to see that the change is rather in the direc- 
tion of generalization of conditions, which were formerly 
exceptional, than a change to conditions wholly without 
precedent. 

I have all through this article written of Germany and 
France as the modern military countries to be taken as a 
standard in all comparisons. The French have imitated 
the Germans very closely since the war of 1870. But, 
although imitation is generally feeble, it must always 
be borne in mind that the French people have greater 
military aptitude than the German, and that unless 
beaten at the beginning of a war they are always in the 
highest degree formidable. The perfection of system 
is to be found in Germany, and the peculiarities of the 
German system are the combination of enlightened 
patriotism in all its individuality with iron discipline. 
The system is so strong that unless well managed it 
would crush out individual responsibility ; but the system 
itself encourages this individual responsibility all down 
the gradations of the army to the humblest non-com- 
missioned officer and even to the detached private. The 
universality of promotion by a certain high standard of 
merit and the absence of jobbery are more thoroughly 
obtained in Germany than in any other army, and Lord 
Wolseley's criticisms on the 1898 manoeuvres of our 
own army, criticisms renewed in 1900, in which he told 
us that no one had done well in the field, and that this 

350 



WAR 

proved that no one could have done his duty during the 
past year, would be impossible in Germany, and must 
have shocked military opinion throughout that country. 
It is not unusual to assume that the enormous military 
establishments of the continent of Europe are an almost 
unmixed evil. But this may perhaps be disputed on 
two grounds. In some cases, such as that of Italy, the 
army acts as a kind of rough national university in which 
the varied life of districts often discordant is fused into 
a patriotic whole, dialects are forgotten, and a common 
language learned. In the case of France the new military 
system is a powerful engine of democracy. There is a 
French prince (not of the blood) serving at this moment 
in a squad of which the corporal is a young peasant from 
the same department. A few years ago I found the 
Due de Luynes, who is also Due de Chaulnes and Due 
de Chevreuse, the owner of Dampierre, the personal 
friend of kings, serving, by his own wish, for, as the eldest 
son of a widow, he was exempt, as a private of dragoons, 
and respectfully saluting young officers, some of whom 
were his own tenants. The modern military system of 
the continent, in the case of France and Germany at 
least, may also, I think, be shown to have told in favor 
of peace. It is possible for us to occasionally demand 
a war with the greater freedom, because we do not as a 
rule know what war means. Those of us who have seen 
something of it with our own eyes are a very small 
minority. But every inhabitant of France and Germany 
has the reality of war brought home to him with the 
knowledge that those of his own kin would have to fur- 
nish their tribute of " cannon flesh " (as the French and 
Germans call it) at the outbreak of any war; and the 
influence of the whole of the women of both countries is 
powerfully exerted in consequence upon the side of 
peace. 

Charles W. Dilke. 



NAVAL SHIPS 



NAVAL SHIPS 

TN the conditions of naval warfare the century now 
*■ closed has seen a revolution unparalleled in the ra- 
pidity of the transition and equalled in degree only by 
the changes which followed the general introduction of 
cannon and the abandonment of oars in favor of sails 
for the propulsion of ships of war. The latter step was 
consequent, ultimately, upon the discovery of the New 
World and of the sea-passage to India by the Cape of 
Good Hope. The voyage to those distant regions was 
too long and the remoteness from ports of refuge too 
great for rowing galleys, a class of vessels whose con- 
struction unfitted them for developing great size and for 
contending with heavy weather. The change of motive 
power made possible and entailed a different disposition 
of the fighting power, the main battery weight of ships 
being transferred from the bows and sterns — end-on fire 
— to the broadsides. The combination of these two new 
factors caused ships and fleets necessarily to be fought 
in a different manner from formerly — entailed, to use the 
technical word, new tactics. 

The innovations thus briefly mentioned, though equal- 
ly radical, were much more gradual in their progress 
than those witnessed by our generation. The latter 
have occurred not merely within the lifetime but within 
the memory of many who are still among us. They 
are embraced, easily and entirely, within the reign of 
Queen Victoria. It has been said, plausibly, that if a 

355 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

naval officer who died half a century ago could revisit 
the earth he would find himself more at home in the 
ships of Elizabeth than in those of her present suc- 
cessor. No such sudden and sharp contrast troubled 
the seamen of the earlier era. It is true and interesting 
to note that the battle of Lepanto in 1573, although a 
few vessels of broadside type therein exercised a decisive 
influence, was fought chiefly by galleys, while in the 
contest with the Spanish Armada in the English Channel 
fifteen years later sailing ships played the leading part ; 
but while the fact gives a valuable assistance to precision 
of memory by fixing an approximate date when the one 
type was definitely supplanted by the other, it remains 
that the turning-point thus indicated was reached long 
after cannon and sails first were used afloat, and that 
another century elapsed before the galley was definitively 
abandoned. 

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE TRANSITION 

A few dates will illustrate the swiftness of our recent 
transformations. In 1838, when the French navy re- 
duced San Juan de Ulloa, the principal defence of Vera 
Cruz, and in 1840, in the British attack upon Acre, the 
fighting power was wholly in sailing ships such as 
had fought at Trafalgar thirty-five years before. Two 
small paddle steamers towed the French frigate into 
position, while the four British vessels of the same type 
contributed only a desultory addition to the broadsides 
of seven sailing ships of the line, which compelled the 
surrender of the fortress. The first screw ship of the 
line in the British navy was launched in 1852; the last 
sailing ship of that class went out of commission in 
i860. All alike, the ships of Vera Cruz and of Acre, 
and their short-reigning successors, the steam frigates 
and ships of the line, are now as much things of the past, 

356 



NAVAL SHIPS 

in sails, in engines, and in guns, as are the galleys of 
Lepanto and the ships of the Armada. By 1870 it had 
been recognized everywhere that a type of vessel cor- 
responding in essential features with the present armored 
battle-ships had displaced all competitors. The span 
of a single generation had seen the transition of the 
ships of Drake and Nelson to those of our own day. 
The career of Farragut was run in the intermediate peri- 
od. His success for the most part was achieved and his 
renown won with vessels substantially of the older type, 
but with auxiliary steam-power. 

It is almost needless to remark that this seemingly 
abrupt transition is but one incident in the startling 
progress made during the century in all the arts of peace 
as of war. Like the others, it is due to an intellectual 
activity, greater probably than that of our predeces- 
sors, and directed since the peace of 1815 less upon 
external political interests than upon scientific investi- 
gation, and upon the application of the results to the 
improvement of processes of every kind. The changes 
in conception and in development of the instruments 
of naval warfare result from the increased power of 
dealing with refractory material which has been acquired 
by scientific and practical men in the laboratory and the 
workshop. Thus viewed, though so rapid in realiza- 
tion as to amount to a revolution, not only is the change 
seen to be the outcome of a long, though silent prep- 
aration, but it is brought also into its due relation to 
the general movement of the age, and found to share its 
special characteristics. Our ancestors of the eighteenth 
century had their own problems, noble and absorbing, 
but chiefly political in character. While new worlds 
were being gathered into the embrace of European civiliza- 
tion, the leading powers struggling among themselves 
for pre-eminence in the work, and while the harvest was 
ripening for the French Revolution, science crept forward, 

357 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

but slowly and silently, the pre-occupation of the few, 
not the interest of the many. 

The object of the present article is to describe the type 
of war vessel prevalent universally among civilized 
nations when the nineteenth century opened, and to 
trace historically the sequence of ideas and of facts 
which have resulted in the type whose general accept- 
ance is seen now in the practice of the chief naval states. 

SAILING SHIPS AND BROADSIDE BATTERIES 

When the nineteenth century began, the ships that 
contended for the control of the sea were, and for two 
centuries had been, sailing ships with broadside bat- 
teries : the guns, that is, were distributed along both 
sides from the bow to the stern on one, two, three, or 
four decks. From the largest down, all were of this 
type until the very smallest class was reached. In the 
latter, which could scarcely be considered fighting ships, 
the gun power was at times concentrated into a single 
piece, which swept from side to side round the horizon, 
thus anticipating partially the modern turreted ironclad 
with its concentrated revolving battery. 

The arrangement of guns in broadside involved anom- 
alies and inconveniences which seem most singular when 
first noted. A ship in chase of another, for instance, 
had no guns which threw straight ahead. If it were 
wished to fire, in order to cripple the fleeing enemy, it 
was necessary to deflect from the course ; and in order 
to bring most of the guns on one side into play the vessel 
had to swing round nearly at right angles to the direction 
of pursuit. This, of course, lost both time and ground. 
Broadside fire — the distribution of guns in broadside — 
rests, however, upon an unchangeable condition, which 
controls now as it did a century ago. Ships then were 
from three to four times as long as they were broad; 

358 



NAVAL SHIPS 

the proportion now is, length from four to six times the 
breadth — or beam, as it is technically called. There- 
fore, except in small vessels, where the concentration 
of the whole weight that can be carried in battery gave 
but one piece effective against a probable target, a full 
development of fire required the utilization of the long 
side of the ship rather than of its short cross - section. 
This is precisely analogous to the necessity that an army 
has of deploying into line, from any order of march, 
in order to develop its full musketry fire. The mechanical 
attainment of the last century did not permit the con- 
struction of single guns that would contain the weight 
of the whole battery of a big ship : but even had it, guns 
are not wanted bigger than will penetrate their target 
most effectively. When an ounce of lead will kill a man 
it is useless to fire a pound. The limit of penetration 
once reached, it is numbers, not size, that tell : and num- 
bers could be had only by utilizing the broadside. This 
condition remains operative now; but as modern battle- 
ships present two or more kinds of target — the heavy 
armored and that which is light armored, or unprotected 
— the application of the principle in practice becomes 
more complicated. Batteries now are necessarily less 
homogeneous than they once were, because targets vary 
more. 

DISAPPEARANCE OF BOW FIRE 

The adoption of broadside batteries followed, there- 
fore, necessarily upon increase of size and consequent 
length, but not upon that only. It is instructive to ob- 
serve that the sailing fighting ship was derived, in part, 
at least, from the galley, and its resemblance in form 
to the latter is traceable for at least a century after the 
general disuse of the oar. As the galley, however, 
was small, it could concentrate its fire advantageously 
in one or two pieces, for which small number the cross- 

359 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

section offered a sufficient line of emplacement : and as, 
when it could move at all, it could move in any direction, 
there was a further advantage in being able to fire in 
the direction of its motion. Hence, bow fire prevailed 
in galleys to the end, although the great galleasses of 
Lepanto and the Armada had accepted broadside bat- 
teries in great part, and whenever the galley type has 
recurred, as on Lake Champlain during our Revolution- 
ary War, bow fire has predominated. The sailing ship, 
on the contrary, was limited as to the direction in which 
she could move. Taking her as the centre of a circle, 
she could not steer directly for much more than half 
the points on the circumference. Bow fire consequently 
was much less beneficial to her, and, further, it was 
found that, for reasons not necessary to particularize, 
her sailing, steering, and manoeuvring were greatly bene- 
fited by the leverage of sails carried on the bowsprit 
and its booms, projecting forward of the bow, where 
they interfered decisively with right-ahead fire. 

For all these reasons, bow fire disappeared and broad- 
side fire prevailed; but the fundamental one to be re- 
membered is the greater development of fire conferred 
by greater length. All ships — except the very small 
ones known as schooners, cutters, and gunboats — 
were broadside vessels, moved by canvas which was 
carried commonly on two or three masts; but into the 
particulars of the sails it is presumed readers will not 
care to enter. Being thus homogeneous in general 
characteristics, the ships of this era were divided com- 
monly into three principal classes, each of which had 
subdivisions; but it was recognized then, as it is now 
in theory though too little in practice, that such mul- 
tiplication of species is harmful, and our forerunners, 
by a process of gradual elimination, had settled down 
upon certain clearly defined medium types. 

The smallest of the three principal classes of fighting 

360 



NAVAL SHIPS 

ships were called sloops - of - war, or corvettes. These 
had sometimes two masts, sometimes three; but the 
particular feature that differentiated them was that they 
had but one row of guns in broadside, on an uncovered 
deck. The offices discharged by this class of vessel were 
various, but in the apprehension of the writer they may 
be considered rightly as being above all the protectors 
or destroyers of commerce in transit. All ships of war, 
of course, contributed to this end ; but the direct preying 
upon commerce, upon merchant ships, whose resisting 
power was small, was done most economically by small 
vessels of relatively small power. Having a given 
amount of tonnage to devote to commerce destroying, 
many small vessels are more effective than a few big 
ones of unnecessary force. Such being the nature of 
the attack, the resistance must be similar in kind. That 
is, a flock of merchant ships being liable to attack by 
many small adversaries, several small protectors would 
be more efficient than one or two large ones. Sloops-of- 
war served also as despatch vessels and lookouts of a 
fleet, but were less well adapted to this service than 
the frigate was. 

THE FRIGATE AND HER GUNS 

This latter celebrated and favorite class of ship stood 
next in order of power above the corvette, with which it 
might also be said to have blended; for although in 
the frigate class there were two, or at the most three, 
rates that predominated vastly in numbers over all the 
rest, yet the name covered many differing degrees of 
force. The distinguishing feature of the frigate was 
that it carried one complete row of guns upon a covered 
deck — upon a deck, that is, which had another deck 
over it. On this upper or spar deck there were also 
guns — more or fewer — but lighter in weight than those 

361 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

on the covered deck, usually styled the main deck. The 
two principal classes of frigates at the beginning of this 
century were the thirty-two-gun and the thirty-eight- 
gun. That is, they carried nominally sixteen or nineteen 
guns on each side; but the enumeration is misleading, 
except as a matter of comparison, for guns of some 
classes were not counted. Ships generally had a few 
more cannon than their rate implied. The United States 
thirty -two -gun frigate Essex, for example, carried at 
first twenty-six long twelves on the main deck, with six- 
teen carronades and two chase guns on the spar deck. 
Above these two classes came the forty-four-gun frigate, 
a very powerful rate, which was favored by the United 
States navy and received a development of strength then 
unprecedented. 

Being such as here described, the frigate was essen- 
tially, though not exclusively, the appendage of a fleet 
of line-of-battle ships. Wars are decided not by com- 
merce destroying nor by raids, however vexatious, but 
by fleets and armies, by great organized masses — that 
is, by crushing, not by harassment. But ships of the 
line, to perform their function, must keep together, both 
when cruising and when on the field of battle, in order 
to put forth their strength in combination. The in- 
numerable detached services that must be discharged 
for every great organized force need for a fleet to be done 
by vessels of inferior strength, yet so strong that they 
cannot be intercepted or driven off lightly by every whip- 
per-snapper of an armed ship that comes along. More- 
over, a fact not always realized, speed — speed to hasten 
on a mission, to overtake a foe, or to escape pursuit — 
depends upon size, masts that can carry sail and hold 
way amid heavy seas. Hence the frigate, not the lighter 
sloop, was indicated for the momentous duties upon 
which depended the intelligence and the communications 
of the fleet. Such leading considerations are needed to 

362 



NAVAL SHIPS 

be stated and to be kept in mind, for they affected the 
warfare of the last decade of the century quite as really 
as they did that of the first, and a paper would indeed 
be incomplete which confined itself to indicating^ points 
of difference of progress, so-called, and failed to recog- 
nize those essential and permanent conditions which 
time will never remove. Frigates and sloops have dis- 
appeared in name and form, in motive power and in ar- 
mament. Their essential functions remain, and will 
remain while war lasts. 

DUTIES OF THE FRIGATE 

The truth of this statement will be evident from a 
brief mention of the duties frigates actually used to per- 
form. While attending the fleet, not merely a part of it, 
the frigates were thrown out far in advance and on each 
side, as cavalry on land scours the country towards or 
through which the army advances. The distance to 
which they would be thus detached would sometimes 
amount to one hundred or two hundred miles, and the 
absence to days, rejoining being assured by the assign- 
ment of a rendezvous, or by an adequate knowledge of 
the admiral's intended movements. It will be recognized 
that when thus alone frigates might meet equal or su- 
perior forces, to resist or to escape from which both 
strength and speed were needed. An extreme and par- 
ticular case of such service was the watching of an 
enemy's port by one or more frigates, when they had to 
keep close to the entrance, although a fleet might be 
within. Again, frigates were placed in certain central 
positions, rendezvous known only to the superior offi- 
cers, where they cruised steadily, having information 
as to the whereabouts of the fleet, or instructions for 
expected vessels. They were there centres of intelligence, 
round which the movements of the whole body revolved. 

3^3 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

When the fleet was actually in touch with a hostile 
fleet, in pursuit, or when expecting battle, the frigates 
were placed between their own force and the enemy; 
nearer, however, to the latter, as the essential point was 
to keep knowledge of his whereabouts and probable 
intentions. Such a position was at times extremely ex- 
posed. The frigates had to avoid equally capture and 
being driven and shaken off ; they must keep close, yet 
not be caught. When engagement ensued they passed 
through to the off side of their own fleet, where they were 
dispersed at intervals abreast the main line, like the 
file closers of a military line ashore. Here they fulfilled 
one special purpose, besides others. As the fleet fought 
with broadsides only, its ships were ranged one ahead of 
the other. Consequently signals made on the masts of 
the admiral could not be seen always by those ahead or 
astern of him ; but the frigates in the other line made the 
same signals, "repeated," as it was said, where they 
could be read more certainly. But frigates did also 
more hazardous work. They went to crippled ships of 
the line and towed them into other positions, into or out 
of fire, and at times the admiral summoned a frigate 
alongside to carry a message to some part of the battle. 
"I noticed," says Marryatt, in one of his novels, "the 
look of pride on the faces of our officers when it appeared 
that the loss on board our frigate was greater than that 
of some of the ships in the line." 

For such offices it is evident there were wanted a 
strength and a weight which the corvette did not have. 
A corvette would make poor work of towing a heavy 
ship, and could not carry as surely the sail needed to 
maintain a position. At the same time it should be ob- 
served that excess of size above the requirements stated 
should be exceptional. In the opinion of the writer the 
forty-four-gun frigate in her day possessed a fighting 
force and a weight of body in excess of that required 

364 



NAVAL SHIPS 

by the ordinary functions of her nominal class. For 
exceptional reasons, a few of the type were permissible 
in a large navy. On the other hand, it may be inferred 
from the long experience of the British navy, and the re- 
sultant practice, that ships of twenty-eight, twentj^-four, 
and twenty guns, though often styled frigates, were not 
found satisfactory as such. In the distribution of ton- 
nage between size and numbers, a mean must be found ; 
and it must be added that a just mean is a very different 
thing from a compromise. These considerations also 
apply to present-day problems. 

EARLY SHIPS OF THE LINE 

In the fleet -ship, likewise the ship of the line, as the 
opening century styled the class of vessel known in the 
closing days as the battleship, our predecessors had 
reached a mean conclusion. The line-of-battle ship, or 
the ship of the line, as more usually called, differed from 
the frigate generically, in that it had two or more covered 
decks. There were one or two cases of ships with four 
decks, but, as a rule, three were the extreme; and ships 
of the line were roughly classed as two or three deckers. 
Under these heads two-deckers carried in their two cen- 
turies of history from fifty to eighty-four guns; three- 
deckers from ninety to one hundred and twenty. The 
increase in number of guns, resulting, as it did, from 
increase of size, was not the sole gain of ships of the line. 
The bigger ships got, the heavier were their timbers, 
the thicker their planking, the more impenetrable, there- 
fore, their sides. There was a gain, in short, of defen- 
sive as well as offensive strength, analogous to the pro- 
tection given by armor. "As the enemy's ships were 
big," wrote a renowned British admiral, "they took a 
great deal of drubbing." 

Between the great extremes of strength indicated by 

365 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

fifty and one hundred and twenty guns — whose existence 
at one and the same time was the evidence of blind 
historical development, rather than of intelligent relative 
processes — the navy of a centurj' ago had settled upon a 
mean, to appreciate which the main idea and purport of 
the ship of the line must be grasped. The essential 
function of the ship " of the line " was, as the name im- 
plies, to act in combination with other ships in a line of 
battle. To do this was needed not only fighting power, 
but manoeuvring ability — speed and handiness — and 
in order that these qualities might approach homogene- 
ousness throughout the fleet, and so promote action in 
concert, the acceptance of a mean tj^pe was essential. 
To carry three decks of guns, a ship had to expose above 
water a side disproportionately high relatively to her 
length, her depth, and her hold upon the water. She 
consequently drifted rapidly when her side was turned 
to the wind; while, if her length was increased, and so 
her hold on the water, she needed more time and room 
to tack and to wear — that is, to turn around. Ships of 
this class also were generally — though not necessarily — 
slow. 

ADVANTAGES OF THE SEVENTY-FOURS 

The two-decked ship was superior in speed and in 
handiness, and for that reason, even when acting singly, 
she could put forth such power as she possessed more 
quickly and more certainly. But these qualities were 
most conspicuously valuable when ship had to act with 
ship. The great secret of military success, concerted 
action in masses, was in the hands of the two-decked 
ship, because in her were united to the highest point in- 
dividual power and facility for combined action. And 
this was true not only of two-deckers in general, but of 
the particular species known as the sevent3^-four-gun 
ship. Ships below that rate lacked individual fighting 

366 



NAVAL SHIPS 

power. Ships above it, the eighty and eighty-four, lost 
manoeuvring power because of their greater length and 
weight. Under the conditions of sail a fleet of seventy- 
fours could get out the whole power of the force more 
surely and more rapidly than the equivalent number of 
guns in ships of any other kind. Thus offensive power 
dictated its survival. To our own day it reads the 
lesson that offensive power, the sine qua non of a mili- 
tary organization, lies not merely in the greatest strength 
of the single ships, but in the uniformity of their action 
and rapidity of their movements, as conducive to the quick 
putting forth of the strength of the whole body at once 
and in mutual support. 

It may be asked naturally, why, then, were there any 
ships bigger or smaller than this favored type? For 
smaller, the answer is that short ships of lighter draught 
are best suited for shoal or intricate navigation. The 
shoals of Holland forbade heavj^ ships to the Dutch 
navy, materially reducing its fighting strength. Be- 
fore France entered our Revolutionary struggle the 
British sent only sixty-fours to operate upon our com- 
paratively shallow coasts and bars. As regards bigger 
ships, they were useful exceptionally, as were forty-four- 
gun frigates, and for the following reason : Every line of 
battle has three particularly dangerous points — the centre, 
because there the line, if pierced, divides into the two 
smaller fragments ; and the flanks, or ends, because 
the extremities are supported less easily by the rest 
of the force than the centre is, one extremity being far- 
ther from the other than the centre is from either. Such 
local weakness could not be remedied by the use of two 
ships, for, if the line were properly closed, one of them 
could fire at the enemy only through or over the other. 
The sole way of giving the strength there required was 
by concentrating it into individual ships, either by put- 
ting on the additional battery, which gives a three-decker, 

367 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

or by making the seventy-four heavier, resulting in 
an eighty-gun ship on two decks. These stronger ves- 
sels were, therefore, stationed in the centre or on the 
flanks of a line of battle. The particular functions, the 
raison d'etre, of the three leading classes of ships of 
war — the sloop, the frigate, and the ship of the line — 
have now been stated. It remains to give an account 
of the chief features of the armament carried on their 
broadsides, as described. 

BATTERIES SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 

When the nineteenth century began, batteries of ships 
were composed of two principal classes of guns : the long 
gun and the short gun, or carronade. The difference be- 
tween these lay in the way the weight of metal allowed for 
each was utilized. The long gun, as its name implies, 
was comparatively long and thick, and threw a small 
ball with a heavy charge of powder. The ball, there- 
fore, flew swiftly, and had a long range. A carronade 
of the same weight was short and comparatively thin, 
could use only a small charge of powder, lest it burst, 
and threw a large ball. Its shot, therefore, moved slowly 
and had short range. Fired at a target — a ship's side — 
within range of both guns, the shot from the long gun 
penetrated quickly, the wood had not time to splinter 
badly, and a clean hole was the result. The carronade's 
shot, on the contrary, being both larger and slower, 
penetrated with difficulty, all the surrounding wood felt 
the strain and broke up into splinters, leaving a large 
jagged hole, if the shot got through. These effects were 
called respectively piercing and smashing, and are re- 
produced, in measure, upon targets representing the 
side of a modern ironclad. They have been likened famil- 
iarly to the effect of a pistol-ball and of a stone upon a win- 
dow pane : the one goes through clean, the other crashes. 

368 



NAVAL SHIPS 

The smashing of the carronades, when fully realized, 
was worse than penetration, and was greatly dreaded; 
but, on the other hand, a ship which feared them in an 
opponent might keep out of their range. This expe- 
dient was so effective that carronades, which did great 
damage until their tactics were understood, gradually 
fell into disfavor. Nevertheless, they remained in use 
till after the peace of 1815. In 1814 the battery of the 
U. S. S. Essex was chiefly carronades, and their inade- 
quate range was a large factor in her defeat. 

At the period in question guns of all sorts fired only 
non-explosive projectiles, solid or hollow shot. The de- 
structive shell of the present day was used only by pieces 
called mortars, in vertical firing, which will be spoken of 
farther on. Such were not mounted on the ships of the 
fleet generally, nor used against shipping, except when 
packed in a small harbor. They did not enter into naval 
warfare proper. The ram and the torpedo of present 
warfare were unknown. On the other hand, there was 
practised a form of fighting which is thought now to 
have disappeared forever, namely, boarding and fight- 
ing hand-to-hand on the deck. Even then, however, 
boarding did not decide the main issue of a sea-fight, 
except occasionally in very small vessels. The deck of 
a large and fresh ship was not to be reached easily. 
Boarding was like the cavalry charge that routs a waver- 
ing line ; the ship had been beaten at the guns before it 
occurred. 

The real fighting was done by the long guns and car- 
ronades disposed in the broadsides. Besides rapidity 
and precision of fire, always invaluable, the two oppo- 
nents sought advantage of position by manoeuvring. 
They closed, or they kept apart, according to their un- 
derstanding of the other's weight and kind of battery. 
Each tried, when possible, to lie across the bow or the 
stern of the enemy, for then his guns ranged from end 
2 A 369 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

to end of the hostile ship, while the latter's broadside 
could not reply. Failing this extreme advantage of 
position, the effort was made so to place one's self that 
the opponent's guns could not bear — for they swept only 
a few degrees before and abaft the broadside — while 
your own could. If this also was impossible, the con- 
testants lay side to side at a greater or less distance, 
and the affair became an artillery duel. 

BRITISH AND FRENCH STYLES OF FIGHTING 

Besides these recognized advantages of position, there 
was also a question upon what part of the enemy the 
fire should be directed. In this there were two principal 
schools of tactics, one of which aimed at the hull, to 
break down the fire of the hostile ship and destroy her 
fighting men, while the other sought, by pointing higher, 
to cut away the sails, rigging, and masts, rendering the 
foe helpless. The latter, in general, was the policy of 
the French; the former, and, it may be affirmed, the 
more surely successful, was the practice of the British. 
The two schools find their counterpart in the tactical 
considerations which now affect the question of rapid- 
fire and of heavy guns, each of which has its appropriate 
target, covering in the latter case the motive power, in 
the former the personnel. 

These three leading classes of vessels, with their func- 
tions, armaments, and tactics of the single ship, as de- 
scribed, performed in their day and during the great 
maritime contests of two centuries all the duties that at 
any time can be required of a maritime fighting organiza- 
tion. By them the control of the sea in the largest sense 
was disputed and was determined; by them commerce 
was attacked, and by them it was protected. They 
themselves have passed away, but the military factors 
remain the same. The mastery of the sea and the con- 

370 



NAVAL SHIPS 

trol of its commerce — of which blockade is but a special 
case — are now and must remain always the chief ends 
of maritime war. The ends continuing the same, the 
grand disposition of navies — their strategy — reposes 
upon the same principles that it ever did. Similarly, 
while the changes in the characteristics of ships will 
cause the individual vessel to be fought in manners 
different from its predecessors, the handling of masses of 
ships in battle — fleet tactics — must proceed on the same 
general principles as of old. The centre and the two ex- 
tremities of all orders are always the points of danger; 
concentration upon one or two of the three, however ef- 
fected, must be always the principle of action. These 
things, which cannot vary, form, therefore, no part of a 
paper which deals with changes. 

THEY HAD THEIR BREAK-DOWNS THEN, TOO 

There should be added for the general public the cau- 
tion that the difficulties, the imperfections, and the fre- 
quent halting state of ships-of-war in commission for 
sea service at the present day are no new things. To 
the naval historian familiar with the correspondence of 
the past they are the inevitable attendants of all gov- 
ernment action, wherein the most economical methods 
are always dominated, historically, by considerations 
of expediency which are political in character. The 
necessity of keeping the public in good-humor, and of 
not laying open points upon which opposition can en- 
large, induces apparent economies, which sacrifice not 
only economy, but the best results. This is a great 
evil, as yet apparently inseparable from public enter- 
prises as distinguished from private ones. If any one 
supposes that the ships with which Great Britain over- 
threw Napoleon, and with which Nelson and his con- 
temporaries won their as yet unparalleled victories, were 

371 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

always or generally in good material condition, he is 
greatly mistaken. What is different in our day, ap- 
parently, is a tendency in ships to rely for their repairs 
and material efficiency more upon dock-yards and work- 
shops than upon their own resources, a disposition also 
to be unduly discouraged bj T imperfections in the motive 
enginery. War will correct this or war will fail. In 
maintaining efficiency while keeping the sea, quite as 
much as in fighting skill, lay the supreme excellence of 
officers like Nelson and Jervis. Men now ought to ap- 
preciate better than they do what difficulties of this sort 
seamen underwent a hundred 3-ears ago and how they 
refused to } T ield to them. " The difference between my- 
self and the French marshals," the Duke of Wellington 
is reported to have said, " was as when a man starts on a 
journey with a new harness. What if something gives 
way, as in war something is sure to go wrong? Shall 
you stop or go back for a workman? Not so; hitch up 
the break with a bit of rope, or whatever comes handy, 
and go on. That is what I did." 

The succession of cause and effect which has produced 
the present ship-of-war will be traced in rapid outline, 
in order to leave as much room as may be for the descrip- 
tion of the essential feature of the ship herself as she 
now exists. 

Two chief factors concur to a ship-of-war — motive 
power and fighting power. The displacement of sails 
by engines, and the progressive development of the 
latter, are features of the general progress of the century. 
The engines of a ship-of-war are differentiated from 
those of merchant ships chiefly by the necessity of pro- 
tection. This affects their design, which must be sub- 
ordinated to the requirement of being as far as possible 
below the water-line. The further great protection 
now afforded is incident rather to the use and develop- 
ment of armor as a part of the fighting power. 

372 



NAVAL SHIPS 

Fighting power divides into offensive and defensive. 
Armor now represents the latter. The fighting ship 
in every age is the product of the race between the two, 
and in the nineteenth century this was unprecedented 
in the ground covered and in the rapidity of the pace, 
due to the increased power of dealing with materials, 
already alluded to. 

CONTEST OF ARMOR AND PROJECTILE 

The modern contest began with the introduction of 
horizontal shell fire in the third decade of the century. 
This term must be explained. It has been said that all 
ships' guns up to 1815 threw non-explosive projectiles. 
In practice this is true ; although Nelson alludes to certain 
shell supplied to him for trial, which he was unwilling 
to use because he wished not to burn his prizes, but 
to take them alive. A shell is a hollow projectile filled 
with powder, the idea of which is that upon reaching the 
enemy it will burst into several pieces, each capable of 
killing a man, and the flame not impossibly setting 
woodwork on fire. It was necessary that the powder 
within should not explode from the combustion of the 
cartridge of the gun, for if it did its force, combined with 
the latter, might burst the gun; yet the process that 
should result in bursting must begin at that moment 
or else it would not take place at all. This difficulty 
was met by a short column of hard, compressed powder 
called the fuse, which extended from the outside to the 
inside of the shell. The outer end was inflamed by the 
charge of the gun, but from its density it burned slow- 
ly, so that the charge of the shell was not enkindled for 
five, ten, or more seconds. This expedient was in use 
over a century ago ; but owing to imperfections of manu- 
facture, no certainty was attained that the fuse might 
not be driven in or broken by the force of the discharge, 
or the shell itself be cracked and so explode prematurely. 

373 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Shell, therefore, were fired with very light charges ; and, 
to obtain sufficient range — go far enough — they were 
used in very short, very thick guns, called bombs or 
mortars, to which great elevation was given. Such 
firing, because the shell flew high in the air, was called 
vertical firing, in contradistinction to the fire of the long 
gun or carronade. called horizontal fire because their 
projectiles rose little above the level. 

The destructiveness of shell from ordinary guns was 
so obvious, especially for forts to use against wooden 
ships, that the difficulties were gradually overcome, 
and horizontal shell fire was introduced soon after the 
cessation of wars allowed men time for thought and 
change. But although the idea was accepted and the 
fact realized, practice changed slowly, as it tends to do 
in the absence of emergency. In the attack on Vera 
Cruz, in 1848, Farragut was present, and was greatly 
impressed, as with a novelty, by the effect of what he 
called the "shell shot," a hybrid term which aptly ex- 
presses the transition state of men's minds at the time. 
I remember an officer who entered the navy in 1840 
telling me the respectful awe and distrust with which 
his superiors then regarded the new weapon, a very few 
of which for each gun were supplied tentatively. Ten 
years more, however, saw a great change, and in 1853 
the attack of the Russian squadron of wooden sailing- 
ships upon the Turkish vessels in the Bay of Sinope 
gave an object-lesson that aroused the naval world to 
what wooden ships must expect from horizontal shell 
fire. In a few minutes three out of seven Turkish frigates 
were in flames; while of nine sailing-ships and two 
steamers only one of the latter escaped. 

HORIZONTAL SHELL FIRE 

The Crimean War followed quickly, and in 1854 the 
wooden steamships of the line of the allies, vessels iden- 

374 



NAVAL SHIPS 

tical in fighting characteristics with those of Trafalgar, 
attempted to silence masonry works at Sebastopol. 
Though the disaster was not so great, the lesson of 
Sinope was reaffirmed. Louis Napoleon, a thoughtful 
man though scarcely a man of action, had foreseen the 
difficulty, and had already directed the construction of 
five floating batteries which were to carry armor. Be- 
fore the war ended these vessels attacked the forts at 
Kinburn, which they compelled to surrender, losing, 
themselves, no men except by shells that entered the gun 
ports. Their armor was not pierced. 

Horizontal shell fire had called for iron armor, and 
the two, as opposing factors, were now established in 
the recognition of men. The contest between the two 
sums up the progression and the fluctuations of military 
ideas which have resulted in the battle-ship of to-day, 
which, as the fleet-ship, remains the dominant factor in 
naval warfare, not only in actual fact but in present 
probability. From the first feeble beginnings at Kin- 
burn to the present time, although the strife has waxed 
greatly in degree, it remains unchanged in principle 
and in kind. To exclude the shell, because, starting 
as one projectile, it became many after penetration, in 
what does it differ from excluding the rapid-fire gun, 
whose projectiles are many from the first, and penetrate 
singly? 

There occurred, however, one singular development, 
an aberration from the normal line of advance, the chief 
manifestation of which, from local and temporary con- 
ditions, was in our own country. This was the transient 
predominance of the monitor type and idea ; the iron-clad 
vessel, with very few very heavy guns, mounted in one 
or two circular revolving turrets, protected by very 
heavy armor. The monitor type embodied two ideas. 
The first was the extreme of defensive power, owing to 
the smallness of the target and the thickness of its armor 

375 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

— the hull of the vessel rising but little above the water — 
the turret was substantially the only target. The sec- 
ond was an extreme compression of offensive power, the 
turret containing two of the heaviest guns of the day, 
consequently guns of the heaviest penetration, which 
could fire, not in one direction, nor in several, but in all 
directions as the turret revolved, and which were prac- 
tically the sole armament of the ship. The defensive 
power of the monitor was absolute up to the extreme 
resisting endurance of its armor. Its offensive power 
must be considered relatively to the target to which its 
guns were to be opposed. If much in excess of that 
target's resistance, there was waste of power. Actually 
in our Civil War monitors were opposed to fortifications, 
except in one or two instances when they had to contend 
with the imperfect structures which the Confederates 
could put afloat. The target, therefore, was not in 
excess of their gun power. Moreover, being for coast 
warfare, the monitor then was necessarily of small 
draught and small tonnage. Her battery weight, there- 
fore, must be small, and consequently lent itself to con- 
centration into two guns, just as the battery weight'of a 
schooner a century since found its best disposition in 
one long traversing gun. 

This was the infancy period of the iron-clad ship. 
The race between guns and armor was barely begun, 
and manufacturing processes still were crude. As 
these improved, with astounding rapidity, the success- 
ful production of rifled cannon of ever-increasing dimen- 
sions and penetrative force imposed an increased armor 
protection, which at the first was obtained chiefly by 
an increase of thickness, i. e., of weight. As guns and 
armor got heavier, ships had to be bigger to carry them, 
and, if bigger, of course longer. But the monitor idea, 
admirably suited to small ships, had now fast hold of 
men's minds — in England especially, for the United 

376 



NAVAL SHIPS 

States lapsed into naval somnolence after the war — 
and it was carried irreflectively into vessels of huge 
dimensions whose hulls rose much above the water. 
Weight for weight, the power of the gun outstripped the 
resistance of armor, and it soon became evident that 
even in a large ship perfect protection could be given only 
to a part of the structure. Passing over intermediate 
steps, the extreme and final development of the monitor 
idea was reached in the Inflexible, planned in 1876 by 
the British Admiralty, built in the following years, and 
still in service. This vessel was of eleven thousand 
eight hundred and eighty tons displacement. She was 
three hundred and twenty feet long, and of that length 
only the central one hundred and ten feet had protection, 
but that was by armor two feet thick, while armored 
partitions extended from each end of this side belt across 
the vessel, forming a box one hundred and ten feet long 
by seventy-four broad. Within this box were two turrets, 
each with sixteen inches of armor, and carrying two 
guns which threw a shell of a ton weight. 

THE COMING OF THE MONITOR 

The first monitor has been called an epoch-making 
ship, for she began an era. The Inflexible was also 
epoch-making, for she closed the era of the monitor pure 
and simple. Upon a development of three hundred and 
twenty feet of length she carried only four guns, of which 
it is not too much to say that their power was very far 
in excess of almost all targets that could be opposed 
to them. If, indeed, her possible opponents could have 
carried such an armor as her own all over their exposed 
surface, her guns would have been no heavier than 
needed, and the fewness must be accepted ; but this was 
not the case. Like herself, ships of twelve thousand 
tons must have a penetrable target far exceeding in sur- 

377 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

face the almost impregnable box she presented. The 
unreasonableness of the result struck men at once, 
though of course she had advocates. As an exception, 
such a ship might pass ; as a type, never. It was pointed 
out that guns of very small power could pierce the ex- 
posed ends about the water-line, and that, as water en- 
tered by numerous holes, she would not only sink lower, 
but for constructional reasons, not necessary here to 
give, she would lose stability rapidly — become liable 
to overset. If under such conditions she attempted to 
turn round, the inclination vessels take in so doing would 
be enough alone to cause her to capsize. Her defenders 
did not deny this; but they said that the likelihood of 
her exposed ends being so riddled was too slight to justify 
alarm. 

Under artillery conditions, then, this reply was plausible, 
though it soon ceased to be so. Even then, however, 
it was true that a ship with only four guns that fired 
very slowly, and with such an exposed surface, was 
liable to serious injury from a nimble antagonist firing 
many guns rapidly. The defensive weakness of the 
Inflexible is apparent; her offensive power, great as in 
the aggregate it was, was much impaired by lack of 
proper development, by undue compression into very 
few guns, the larger part of whose effect was wasted, 
except in the rare instances when they struck a target 
not often to be encountered. But this was not the only 
deduction from her strength through the excess of con- 
centration. Very large guns fire very slowly, yet they 
are as subject to inaccuracy from the motion of the ship 
as is the smallest piece. Where the target is missed, it 
is immaterial whether the shot weighs a ton or a pound ; 
and a gun that fires ten times to another's once has ten 
times the chance of hitting. It is evident, therefore, 
taking the Inflexible as she was, that a ship of the same 
weight and length with ten guns in broadside — twenty 

378 



NAVAL SHIPS 

altogether — and with similar armor over her engines 
only, would have at the least a fair chance against the 
Inflexible, and would be much more efficient against 
vessels with average armor. Each of her ten guns 
firing once a minute, while the Inflexible' s cannon re- 
quired five minutes for discharge, would give over ten 
shots to one. 

CRITICISM OF THE INFLEXIBLE 

While the Inflexible was building there was born the 
idea whose present maturity enforces the abandonment 
of the pure monitor, except for vessels comparatively 
small and for special purposes. Machine guns, the 
Gatling, and the mitrailleuse were already known, 
and the principle was being applied to throw projectiles 
of a pound weight and over, which were automatically 
loaded and fired, requiring only to be aimed. Upon 
these followed the rapid-fire gun, of weight greatly ex- 
ceeding theirs, the principle of which may be said to be 
that it is loaded by hand, but with ammunition so prepared 
and mechanism for loading so simple and expeditious 
as to permit a rate of firing heretofore unparalleled. 
The highest extension of this principle is reached in the 
five-inch gun, up to which size the cartridge and the pro- 
jectile make a single package called fixed ammunition, 
which is placed by one motion. Together they weigh 
ninety-five pounds, about as much as an average man 
can handle in a seaway, the projectile itself weighing 
fifty pounds. There are, it is true, six-inch rapid-fire 
guns, but in them the cartridge and shell are placed 
separately, and it is questionable whether such increase 
of effect, through greater weight, as they give is not 
gained at a loss of due rapidity. 

The Inflexible exemplified in an extreme form the 
elements of offensive and defensive strength and weak- 

379 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ness. Four guns of enormous calibre and no other 
battery, except pieces so light as to be useless against 
the thinnest armor, an impenetrable wall, covering 
a very limited area, and the remainder of the hull ex- 
posed, to be cut to pieces by a battery of numerous light 
cannon. When to the latter the rapid-fire idea was 
successfully applied, multiplying their efficiency three 
or fourfold, her position, as an example to be followed, 
became untenable. The monitor idea, which refused 
to utilize the broadside for developing fire, and aimed 
chiefly at minimizing the target, evidently needed quali- 
fication after a certain moderate limit of size was passed; 
and that limit of size was when the entire weight of 
battery the ship could carry sufficed only for two, or, 
at the most, four guns of power great enough to pierce 
heavy armor. Strictly, in the opinion of the writer, the 
monitor type should not prevail beyond the size that 
can bear only one turret. 

In the strife of guns with armor, therefore, increase 
of power in guns, outstripping continually the increase 
of resistance in armor, called for bigger ships to bear 
the increased armor weight, till the latter could not 
possibly be placed all over the ship's body. Hence 
the exposed target, upon which plays the smaller battery 
of rapid-fire guns. 

To comprehend fundamentally the subsequent develop- 
ment, we must recur to the rudimentary idea that a ship 
of war possesses two chief factors, motive force and 
fighting force, the latter being composed of guns mainly 
and of men. Corresponding to these two chief powers 
there were of old, and there are still, two vulnerable 
elements, two targets, upon one or the other of which 
hostile effort logically and practically must be directed. 
A century ago the French, aiming at sails and spars, 
sought the destruction of the motive force; the British 
directed their fire upon the guns and men. In strict 

38o 



NAVAL SHIPS 

analogy now, the heavy guns seek the motive power, 
over which the heaviest armor is concentrated ; the rapid- 
fire guns, searching the other portions of the ship, aim 
at the guns and men there stationed. 

BATTLE-SHIPS OF THIS DAY 

The logical outcome of these leading ideas is realized 
in the present battle-ships as follows : There are two 
turrets, protected by armor, the thickest that can be given 
them, considering the other weights the ship has to carry, 
and of the highest resisting quality that processes of 
manufacture can develop. Armor of similar character 
and weight protects the sides about the engines. In 
each turret are guns whose power corresponds to the 
armor which protects them. Their proper aim — not, of 
course, always reached — is the heavy armored part of 
the enemy, chiefly the engines, the motive power. When 
they strike outside of this target, as often must happen, 
there is excess of blow, and consequent waste. The 
turrets are separated, fore and aft, by a distance as great 
as possible, to minimize the danger of a single shot or 
any other local incident disabling both. The fact that 
the ends of ships, being comparatively sharp, are less 
waterborne and cannot support extreme weights, chiefly 
limits this severance of the turrets. Between the two, 
and occasionally before or abaft them, is distributed 
the broadside rapid fire of the ship, which in its develop- 
ment is in contradistinction to the compressed fire of 
the monitor. This fire is rapid because the guns are 
many and because individually they can fire fast. Thus, 
the turret gun, twelve or thirteen inch in bore, fires once 
in five minutes; the five-inch rapid-fire gun thrice in 
one minute. The rapid-fire battery aims outside of the 
heaviest armor. When it strikes that, unless it chance 
to enter a gun port, its effect is lost; but as much the 

38i 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

greater part of the ship is penetrable by it, the chance 
of wasting power is less than in the case of the heavier 
guns. As most of a ship's company are outside the pro- 
tection of the heaviest armor, the rapid-fire gun aims, 
as did the British in the old line-of-battle ship, at the 
personnel of the enemy. 

The reader will comprehend that in the application 
of these leading ideas there is considerable variety in 
detail. The two turrets may be looked upon at present 
as the least variable factor; and in disposing armor all 
practice agrees that the turrets and engines receive the 
greatest protection. But how to distribute the total 
available weight of armor gives rise to varieties of practice 
which find their reflection in similar variety in the sizes 
and numbers of the rapid-fire guns, to whose penetrative 
force there is a corresponding thickness of armor. For 
example, two battle-ships now building for the United 
States navy have four thirteen - inch guns in turrets, 
and in broadside fourteen five-inch, twenty six-pounder, 
and six one-pounder rapid-fire guns; between the two 
classes they have four eight-inch guns, also mounted 
in smaller turrets, superimposed on the main turrets. 
A ship since designed will have the same thirteen-inch 
gun fire, but in place of the eight-inch and five-inch 
will have fourteen six-inch rapid-fire guns. An expert 
officer, discussing these, says : " In the former the weight 
of fire per minute is two thousand and fifty pounds on 
the broadside and five hundred ahead or astern, while 
with the latter plan it is only one thousand seven hundred 
and fifty on the broadside and five hundred ahead and 
astern. But the main objection to the second plan is 
that the volume of effective fire is enormously diminished 
by the omission of eight-inch guns. The larger area 
covered with their armor is fairly safe from the six-inch 
gun at fighting ranges, whereas the eight-inch pro- 
jectile at any range, and at even a considerable angle of 

382 



NAVAL SHIPS 

incidence, will penetrate it." In the judgment of the 
present writer the weight of this argument depends 
upon what is behind the armor the eight-inch only will 
penetrate. If battery and men, it is strong, if not decisive ; 
if motive power only, not. 

HISTORY'S TEACHING AND THE FUTURE 

The object of this paper has been not to present an 
accumulation of details, but to elucidate the principles 
upon which the details rest. The latter, when correct, 
are but the application of principles to practice. Sub- 
ject to the imperfections attendant on all human work, 
the writer is persuaded that the greatest errors in practice 
— and especially the lack of homogeneousness which 
characterizes the present battle-ships — arise chiefly from 
the failure to refer back to principles. Until war has 
given us the abundant experience which led our pred- 
ecessors to the broadside seventy-four as the rule, with 
occasional exceptions, we must depend upon reasoning- 
alone for the solution of our problems; and the reasoner 
keeps within the limits of safety only by constant refer- 
ence to fundamental facts. 

The one experience of war which ships really con- 
temporary have had was in the battle of the Yalu. Its 
teachings lose some value from the fact that the well- 
drilled Japanese used their weapons to advantage, while 
the Chinese were ill trained ; still, some fair inferences 
can be made. The Japanese had a great many rapid- 
fire guns, with few very heavy ones, and their vessels 
were not battle-ships properly so-called. The Chinese, 
besides other vessels, had two battle-ships with heavy 
armor and heavy guns. Victory remained with the 
Japanese. In the opinion of the writer two probable 
conclusions can be reached: That rapid-fire guns in 
due proportion to the entire battery will beat down a 

3&3 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ship dependent mainly upon turret guns; that is, be- 
tween two ships whose batteries are alike the issue of 
the contest will depend upon the one or the other gaining 
first a predominance of rapid fire. That done, the tur- 
ret guns of the predominant ship will give the final blows 
to the engines and turrets of the other, whose own tur- 
ret guns cannot be used with the necessary deliberation 
under the preponderant storm of projectiles now turned 
upon them. The other conclusion, even more certain 
than the first, is that rapid-fire guns alone, while they 
may determine an action, cannot make it decisive. De- 
spite the well-established superiority of the Japanese 
rapid fire in that action, the Chinese battle-ships, though 
overborne, were not taken. Their heaviest armor being 
unpierced, the engines and turret guns remained ef- 
fective, and they withdrew unmolested. 

BATTLE-SHIPS THAT ARE TOO LARGE 

The battle-ship constituted as described remains for 
the present the fighting ship upon which the issues of 
war will depend. The type is accepted by all the lead- 
ing naval states, though with considerable variations 
in size. As regards the latter feature, the writer be- 
lieves that the enormous tonnage recently given is ex- 
cessive, and that the reasons which support it, too nu- 
merous and various to be enumerated at length, have 
the following fundamental fault : they look too much 
to the development of the individual ship and too little 
to the fact that the prime requisite of the battle-ship is 
facility for co-operating with other ships of its own 
type — facility in manoeuvring together, facility in mass- 
ing, facility also in subdividing when occasion de- 
mands. It may be remarked, too, that the increase of 
size has gone much more to increase of defensive 
power than of offensive — a result so contrary to the uni- 
versal teachings of war as of itself to suggest pausing. 

384 



NAVAL SHIPS 

Does the present hold out any probabilities of im- 
portant changes in the near future, of revolutionary 
changes? No. For twenty-five or thirty years now 
we have been expecting from the ram and from the tor- 
pedo results which would displace the gun from its su- 
premacy of centuries. Those results, however, are not 
yet visible. No one disputes the tremendous effects of 
the ram and of the torpedo when successfully used ; but 
I believe I am correct in saying that the great prepon- 
derance of professional opinion does not attribute to 
them a certainty, or an approach to certainty, impairing 
the predominance of the gun. This is not the conclu- 
sion of mere conservation in a profession naturally 
conservative. The fluctuations of professional opinion 
have been sufficiently marked and the matter sufficiently 
argued to dispose of that contention. Nor is this su- 
premacy of the gun probably a transient matter, liable 
to pass away with improvements greater than those of 
the last quarter of a century. The advantage of the 
gun depends upon conditions probably permanent — upon 
its greater range, its greater accuracy, its greater rapid- 
ity. The individual effect of each shot may be less than 
that of a torpedo or of a ram thrust ; but, as was said in 
comparing very heavy guns with rapid fire, the probabil- 
ity of many hits prevails over the possibilities of one great 
blow. 

THE GUN AND THE TORPEDO 

In none of these features is either of the other weapons 
likely to overtake the gun. The torpedo relies mainly 
upon stealth, the ram mainly upon a happy chance for 
effective use. Both stealth and chance have their place 
in war; stratagem and readiness, each in place, may 
contribute much. But the decisive issues of war de- 
pend upon the handling of masses with celerity and pre- 
cision, according to certain general principles of recog- 
2B 385 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

nized universality. Afloat, such massed force, to be 
wielded accurately and rapidly, must consist of units 
not too numerous because of their smallness — as tor- 
pedo craft would be — nor too unwieldy because of their 
size. We may not be able to determine yet, in advance 
of prolonged experience of war, just what the happy 
mean may be corresponding in principle to the old sev- 
enty-four, but we may be reasonably sure that it will 
be somewhere in the ranks of the present battle-ships; 
and that in the range, accuracy and rapidity of their 
gun-fire — especially when acting in fleets — will be found 
a protection which the small vessels that rely upon the 
torpedo or ram alone will not be able to overcome, though 
they may in rare instances elude. 

Concerning the frigates and sloops of our predecessors, 
their place is now taken, and their duties will be done, 
by the classes of vessel known generically as cruisers, 
protected or unprotected. The protection, the defensive 
element of strength, has reference mainly to the engines, 
to the motive power. The battery, the offensive factor, 
tends upon the whole to revert more and more to the de- 
velopment of fire, to utilizing the length of the vessel by 
multiplying the number of guns and diminishing their 
individual size; and the tendency is increased by the 
fact that, as such ships are expected to fight only vessels' 
of their own kind, their probable target is penetrable by 
light guns. Speed is the great element in the efficiency 
of cruisers, and whatever the speed in smooth water, a 
great advantage inures to larger ships in heavy winds 
and seas. As for "armored" cruisers, of which there 
are many, they belong rather to the class of battle-ships 
than of cruisers. Whatever the advantages of the par- 
ticular ships, the name suggests a regrettable confusion 
of purpose, and, in practice, a still more regrettable de- 
parture from homogeneity. 

A. T. MAHAN. 



LITERATURE 



LITERATURE 



"^TIME and space/' a noble philosopher has observed, 
* " are but hallucinations." It may be so, and from 
the point of view of the metaphysician ours may have 
been merely a " so-called nineteenth century." Certain it 
is that to judge literature in blocks of centuries is to make 
a convenient but illogical cross-division. The early, and 
perhaps the most important, literary influences of the 
century were in existence long before 1801. Thus, if we 
look at whatever is now called fin de siecle, at violent an- 
tagonism to tradition and convention, at discontent of 
every sort with everything — with rank, wealth, moral- 
ity, law, marriage, the family — we find that this passion 
was as noisy and self-complacent a hundred years ago 
as it is to-day. The French Revolution was the lurid 
playground of "New Women," full of what they sup- 
posed to be new ideas. The German drama of 1780— 1800, 
now best remembered by the parody called "The Rov- 
ers," in the Anti-Jacobin, was replete with the humor- 
less paradoxes and strained situations of Ibsen. The 
shortest way to an understanding of the antiquity of 
our " new ideas " is, in fact, a study of the Poetry of the 
Anti-Jacobin. 

Romance, again, as far as romance depends for her ef- 
fects on desperate deeds, on the rhetoric of noble brigands, 
on the phantasms of the sheeted dead shivering down 
dark passages among skeletons, on clanking chains, and 
on distressed damsels, was as much alive in the end of 
the eighteenth century as at any age of literary history. 

389 * 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Goethe, Schiller, Burger, Mrs. Radcliffe, all following in 
the Gothic wake of honest Horace Walpole and his Castle 
of Otranto, were preparing the ground for Scott and Du- 
mas. Once more the old "popular" elements so neces- 
sary to literature (which, like Antaeus, regains vigor 
on touching mother - earth) had been wholly absent 
from the poetry and prose of the last reigning Stuart 
and of the first two Hanoverian kings of England. 
But, about 1770— 1780, literature had returned to its 
archaic popular sources. Percy had made volks-lieder 
fashionable, Fergusson and Burns had revived the 
rustic muse of Scotland, and Macpherson had given 
mankind a draught, though an adulterated draught, 
from the cup of the sorceries of the Celtic enchantress. 
In opposition to the urban self-restraint and contented 
complacency of the Augustan age, Rousseau had 
preached the pleasures of virtue, sentiment, and of a 
" blessed state of Nature " ; young Werther had gotten 
him a stool to be sad upon, like Master Stephen : weep- 
ing was the mode. Rousseau, as Mr. Pater once ob- 
served in conversation, was " the grandmother of us all," 
and as tearful as Mrs. Gummidge in David Copperfield. 
Meanwhile the " emancipation " born of science had set 
in; people thought they knew all about everything; 
the elder Darwin could explain the universe without a 
God, quite as easily as any modern Darwinian, if not 
so elaborately. He may not have been always correct 
in his theories and facts, still, there they were, and they 
were "emancipating." Yet, far from being laughed out 
of court by the gratifying progress of science, a more 
mystical religion and a life more austere had come in 
from the preaching of Wesley, who was practically the 
parent of our neo-Catholicism in its varying forms. The 
"Oxford Movement," with all the strange after-symp- 
toms which it has left behind it, is directly descended 
from Wesley. Thus romance, sentiment, freedom and 

390 



LITERATURE 

variety in poetic form, philanthropy, revolt against the 
past, return to and reverence for the past, scientific 
doubt, weariness of life, love of nature, wistful belief, 
relapse on the forms of the Church, and everything else 
which stamps the literature of the nineteenth century 
were alive and active in the last half of the eighteenth 
century. The year 1801 made no sudden break. The 
nineteenth century merely went on evolving the prin- 
ciples, revolutionary or reactionary, of the last half of 
the eighteenth century. 

Thus Crabbe, the precursor of whoever, Englishman, 
American, Frenchman, or Slav, has written of the som- 
bre tragedies of the poor, was born in 1754. Blake, 
whose perfectly un-Augustan rhapsodies and mystic 
lyrics were made fashionable about 1870, was born in 
1757, out of due time, for his best side is Elizabethan in 
quality. Burns, born in 1759, is as much at home in 
the nineteenth century as Tolstoi, while Godwin could 
not be more "advanced/' or Mary Wollstonecraft more 
of "a New Woman," if the former belonged to our "For- 
ward Liberals " and the latter perorated at congresses of 
her sex. The first twenty-five years of Miss Austen be- 
long to the eighteenth century ; yet, except for a certain 
" old-fashioned " primness of style, she is the first, and, 
beyond all doubt, the greatest of all nineteenth- cen- 
tury " realistic " novelists of domestic life. For, though 
a "realist,'* she is a humorist, and the combination 
is almost unexampled. Your common realist is a 
gloomy thing, with no more sense of the comic than 
M. Zola. 

Of the new poets, revolutionary in metre and matter, 
Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, and Southey were born in 
1770— 1774; they were mature before the nineteenth cen- 
tury dawned. His northern home, among the hills and 
lakes, fitted Wordsworth to be the austere and mystical 
poet of nature and of man in relation to nature. Born 

391 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

a poet, his genius was determined by his environment, 
while his ardent sympathy with the Revolution at once 
turned his attention to the unregarded poor, and inspired 
his not wholly successful attempt to shake off the tram- 
mels of Augustan "poetic diction," the survival of the 
Latinism of Boileau and Pope. Later, of course, Words- 
worth became the Tory, the patriot, the Churchman, 
and the Stamp Collector. But his poetical creed he 
never consciously changed, though he often lapsed 
from it unconsciously. If Scott was to be a poet at all 
he was fated to be influenced by the New World, not in 
its emancipated ideas, but in its wistful return to the 
Old World of reivers, spearmen, claymores, goblin, 
ghost, and fairy. The Border ballads lulled his cradle 
and were the joy of his childhood and manhood. All 
tradition murmured to him her charms of Border and 
Highland legend ; every ruined abbey and castle had its 
tale for him; to Ettrick and Yarrow he needed not to 
say, like Lady John Scott, "Have you no message for 
me?" He never had a touch of the Augustan horror 
of mountain and torrent, never a touch of the Augustan 
contempt of "Barbarism." Walpole's Castle of Otranto 
and Mrs. Radcliffe's novels of terror went to the molding 
of his genius, as the novels of Miss Edgeworth (born 
1767) suggested fiction about the lives and manners of 
his own people. In his return to the past he came, like 
Lamb, on the Elizabethan drama, and, unlike Lamb, 
on the unpublished documents of the Tudor age, the 
age of desperate resistance to England. But Scott 
would never have been exactly the poet that he was if he 
had not heard "Christabel" recited. "Christabel," the 
entirely original utterance of a genius which, at first, 
was a child of the enlightenment of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. The early ideas of Coleridge were the ideas of 
Rousseau and of Bernard in de Saint Pierre, who was, 
like Coleridge, but more energetically, a seeker for an 

392 



LITERATURE 

ideal land where pantisocracy might flourish and a 
clown might be the poet's "brother." 

In poetry, in poetic form, Coleridge was the real and 
daring innovator, inspired by the eighteenth century 
reaction against convention, and played on likeanseolian 
harp by every wind of his mystic spirit. His reaction 
was too violent even for Lamb; his originality too ex- 
treme even for Wordsworth. In him, of all our later 
poets, the "unconscious self" was the strongest and 
the most free, and of all our poets he had the hardest 
battle with the dull Augustan survival in such critics as 
Jeffrey. To them all the ripened fruit of the blossoming 
time of the late eighteenth century, the poetry of Scott 
and of Wordsworth, was but dimly intelligible, but Cole- 
ridge was the most unintelligible of all. From the Ger- 
many of the late eighteenth century came one of Scott's 
springs of poetic action; from the Lenore of Burger 
(a popular ballad rewritten) and from the Gotz von 
Berlichingen of Goethe. These were the days when 
Scott longed to possess a skull and cross-bones, and in a 
love-letter dilated on his choice of a sepulchre. But what 
came to Coleridge from Germany was the late eighteenth 
century's reaction against the truly " common - sense " 
ideas of Hume, the philosophy of Kant, Schelling, and 
Fichte. In this field, too, he was unintelligible (and no 
wonder), but he was but adapting the ideas of 1770- 1800, 
and the neo-Hegelians of Oxford are doing the same 
thing. A reaction against the materialism of common- 
sense was inevitable; Mesmer, Swedenborg, and Kant 
began what survives in the hands of the Master of 
Balliol and of Professor William James. 

In a more recent generation Byron prolonged the 
Wertherism of Werther, Byron being thus a grandson 
of Rousseau, while he borrowed his form, and borrowed 
it very ill, from what Scott borrowed of Coleridge. The 
genius of Byron is not contested by the sane, but except 

393 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTUR.Y 

in satire it seldom found clear and adequate, because it 
sought hurried, heedless, and tumultuous, expression. 
Scott had a better ear and was not so reckless an im- 
provisatore. Poems that can endure are not written like 
Byron's, in the brief leisure of fashionable industry. 
We admire the native impetus of Byron, his gift of satire, 
his sensitiveness to elemental force in nature and in 
man, but we cannot understand the furore which was so 
much the child of his title, his beauty, his recklessness, 
and his studiously cultivated air of mystery. Mr. 
Lenville, as reported by Mr. Folair, said that Nicholas 
Nickleby was " a regular stick of an actor, and it's only 
the mystery about him that has caused him to go down 
with the people here, though Lenville says he don't 
believe there's anything at all in it." A later age must 
partly adopt the same theory of Byron's original and 
unparalleled success in Europe as well as in England. 
He was mysterious Manfred, he was Childe Harold, 
he was the Corsair; a hero of Mrs. Radcliffe's, with an 
Oriental air and a gloomy secret and a heart burning 
with indignation against the unworthy species of men. 
What had Byron done? Even Goethe was curious, 
believing wild anecdotes ; now we really do not care what 
Byron did, recognizing in him, his genius, and his pose, 
not so much the "Satanic," as the result of hysteria 
and madness in his race. Satanism, from of old, has 
been mainly hysteria. The element of personal reclame 
in Byron has faded, and with it fades his reputation as 
an earth-shaking poet. Attempts to revive that fame 
in our day, attempts to bring us back to " the noble poet," 
are respectable, being based on loyalty to the taste of 
our great-grandfathers and grandmothers in all civilized 
countries. But the efforts are futile. "Byron," says 
Mr. Saintsbury, " seems to me a poet distinctly of the 
second class, and not even of the best kind of second, 
inasmuch as his greatness is chiefly derived from a 

394 



LITERATURE 

sort of parody, a sort of imitation of the qualities of the 
first. His verse is to the greatest poetry what melo- 
drama is to tragedy, what plaster is to marble, what 
pinchbeck is to gold." Such, however unpopular they 
may be, are my own candid sentiments, for though 
from childhood I could and did read all our great poets 
with pleasure, it was not with the kind of pleasure which 
Byron in his satire and his declamation could occasion- 
ally give me. He is monotonous, he is rhetorical, his 
versification is often incredibly bad, and he is more 
obscure, mainly by dint of rmrry, bad printing, and bad 
grammar, than Mr. Browning. Thus Byron leaves 
us impressed as with a vast, even volcanic, yet dandi- 
fied force, untrained and often misdirected. Either 
by nature, or in reaction, he professed sympathy with 
the Augustan school of Queen Anne's reign, and sided 
with Pope in the long quarrel as to whether Pope is a 
poet. 

Even the modern opponents of Byron must recognize 
in him qualities which won the admiration and affection 
of Scott and Shelley. In Shelley we had a true child 
of the revolution, the Aufklarung, and the later eighteenth 
century. His boyhood trifled with chemical science 
(probably not then popular with the human boy) ; his 
adolescence was given to converting school -girls into 
"dear little atheists." His social ideas, like those of 
some advanced moderns, aimed at the absolute destruc- 
tion of the family; and the moral of Laon and Cynth- 
na went far behind the morals of the most backward 
savages, who make incest a capital offence. Shelley, 
a boy all his life, was more boyishly devoted to destruc- 
tion than even the newest writers on the relations of 
the sexes. In "making all things new" both he and 
they are, in fact, relapsing on a condition of society 
which, if it ever existed, is so old that it may be called 
"pre-human," and is contrary to nature, as far as we 

395 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

can study human nature in the least developed of tribes. 
His ideas conducted Shelley to the tragedy and farce 
of his career: his desertion of one young wife, followed 
by her suicide, and his marriage with another, in entire 
opposition to his own opinions. In literature he began 
at school with a devout following of Mrs. Radcliffe; 
while, in Queen Mab and Alastor, vigorous but vague 
and misty Childe Harold, wandering in No Man's 
Land, he first displayed his originality in poetical 
form. His personal character being noble and generous 
in the highest degree, his sympathy with the poor and 
the oppressed being a true passion, Shelley's errors 
arose from the fixed idea that almost every human or- 
dinance must, being old, be necessarily bad. He would 
recognize that there is, after all, something right in the 
sixth commandment, but did not draw the inference 
that a gleam of reason might also be found in most of the 
rest of the Decalogue. The state of society then, as 
always, provoked revolt, but the state of society was 
grievous, not because its moral laws were bad, but because 
its laws were not obeyed. Shelley had no turn for nar- 
rative, and, in such poems as The Revolt of Islam, 
it is the splendid meteoric genius, the unexcelled music 
that captivate. In lyrics he was probably the most 
original force since the Elizabethan age: his verse is a 
singing and soaring flame. In Adonis his righteous 
indignation carries him forward like an angel with a 
sword of fire; and The Witch of Atlas is a triumph 
in a new "fairy way of writing." His is the Muse of 
clouds and stars, of sea and tempest, of all the aspects, 
and, in appearance, most capricious forces of the world, 
yet his is also the Muse of flowers and peaceful woods, 
of dejection and of delight. What the born rebel, Milton, 
might have been without the foundation and trammels 
of Puritanism, that Shelley was, though his wild and 
tender lyric note was even more exquisite than Milton's. 

396 



LITERATURE 

Neither was, in the full sense, human, for both were 
without humor, as may be seen in their humorous pieces. 

Keats, but three years younger than Shelley (1795), 
was more a true child of the nineteenth century. His 
social ideas, though of course liberal, were more in 
abeyance; he was more exclusively an artist; and his 
art was more controlled by the revived Elizabethanism 
of Leigh Hunt (1784). That singular man, who had 
so much taste, and so much of it bad ; so intense a theory 
of social benevolence, and so keen a belief that it was 
more blessed to receive than to give, "owed little" (in 
the way of literature) " to any but the old masters, and 
many contemporaries owed not a little to him." Few 
owed more, for good and bad, than Keats. Virgil he had 
found out for himself, and had translated when a school- 
boy. Spenser, too, he found for himself, and Greece 
he discovered afresh in Lempriere's Dictionary and in 
Chapman's Homer. But this superficial euphuism and 
elaborate verbal quaintness he partly derived at second 
hand from Leigh Hunt. 

That something in Leigh Hunt which suggested 
Harold Skimpole to Dickens, and his violent conception 
of The Cockney School to Lockhart, was not hidden 
from Keats, and inspired him with some bitter words. 
It was what he derived from Hunt that gave occasion 
to Keats's assailants, who were more of political than of 
literary partisans. Lockhart, or Wilson, or both, with 
the Quarterly reviewer, in attacking Endymion were 
attacking, they thought, a member of an affected, ef- 
feminate, and radical coterie. Keats himself, maturing 
with the suddenness of genius, looked on Endymion as 
thoroughly immature. But killed, or even discouraged, 
by his critics he was not, and on a page of a copy 
of Lamia where his publishers spoke of his discourag- 
ment he wrote "This is a lie." (The copy is in the pos- 
session of Canon Ainger.) Keats, like Burns, whom he 

397 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

so intensely admired and so unerringly judged as a man 
and a poet, was his own best critic. Despite his boyish 
lusciousness of taste, and the fever of letters written when 
dying, there was no manlier or more chivalrous soul in 
England than that of the poet of the odes to the nightin- 
gale and to autumn. Keats at his best attained sheer 
perfection of language, of emotion, and of thought. As 
he advised Shelley to be, he was not content with less 
than filling all the rifts with pure gold. "Untaught," 
like the minstrel of Odysseus, he combined a Greek clarity 
and largeness of manner with that romance which Greece 
does not lack, but which he possessed in a degree more 
conspicuous, at least to readers who are not Greeks. 
Though he has not been and cannot be imitated, he has 
supplied to Tennyson and the best moderns a standard 
and an ideal. That the Shakespearian copiousness of hu- 
manity and humor and dramatic genius would ever have 
been his nothing indicates, but what writer of the nine- 
teenth century, except Scott, has possessed a large share 
of these qualities ? In poetry, not one, and it was in prose 
that Scott wore his fragment of the cloak of Shakespeare. 
For the century has not produced, in England or America, 
a great dramatic poet. It is to fiction, to Scott, Dickens, 
Thackeray, Stevenson, Meredith, Hawthorne, George 
Eliot, that we must look for the humor and humanity 
and passion which, earlier, found their vehicle in the 
drama. 

Ours is a reading rather than a seeing century, though 
this does not explain the reason which made the great 
novelists incapable of writing for the stage. Of the 
other poets of the early century, Campbell, Rogers, Moore, 
Landor, Hogg, and the ladies, Mrs. Hemans, and L. E. L., 
and Beddoes, space does not permit us to treat. Landor's 
audience has not increased; Rogers has none; Campbell 
is best remembered for war songs which I fear are over- 
rated; Hogg, despite some exquisite passages in Kil- 

398 



LITERATURE 

meny, and some admirable songs, suffers from his 
countrymen's exclusive devotion to Robbie Burns. 
When Scott turned to fiction (1814) the current of popular 
taste at once changed into that channel. Byron had 
still his vogue ; Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge then sang 
only to the few initiated ; Wordsworth was past his prime ; 
and with the general public nothing was really popular 
but fiction, and that fiction was Scott's. Miss Austen 
is probably much more widely appreciated to-day than 
when she died, little noted by the world, in 1817. A 
criticism of Scott's novels, which first made fiction su- 
preme and far above poetry in the estimation of " the 
reading public," cannot be attempted in this place. 
The best estimate of Scott, if far from most favorable, 
is his own, in the introduction to The Fortunes of Nigel. 
His faults of prolixity, haste, indifference to delicacy of 
style, and even to grammar ; his " big bow-wow " vein 
(as he calls it) ; the stilted theatrical language of his 
Catherine Glovers and Helen Macgregors — all these 
defects, with his hasty denouements (as of Shakespeare 
and Moliere), are patent, are confessed, and probably 
deter many readers from making profit of his humor, 
his rich knowledge of and sympathy with all human 
nature, his infrequent but exquisite touches of passion, 
his tragedy and comedy. None the less, Scott is the 
main stock of the fiction of the century. Men may 
now have more minute knowledge, though so wide a 
knowledge has none ; may have more wit, if less humor ; 
may eagerly hunt for all that Scott loathed and avoided 
in our animal nature ; may, indeed must, practise a more 
careful style, but all the novelists are, willy-nilly, children 
of Scott and Miss Austen. Dickens, indeed, owed more 
to Smollett (one of Scott's chief favorites), Thackeray 
owed more to Fielding, the "Kailyard School" owed 
more to Gait (1779-1839). But Scott is "the father of 
the rest," above all, of Dumas ; and Miss Austen is the 

399 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

mother. Lord Lytton and Mr. Disraeli had, especially 
at first, a tinge of Byronism, later developing on their 
own lines : Mr. Disraeli's political; Lord Lytton's multi- 
farious, including the line of modern mysticism, now 
often worked. Scott lived to be interested in Lytton, 
and might have seen (though probably he did not see 
them) the little-noted beginnings of Browning and Ten- 
nyson, about 1830. 

What he did see, and admire, was the performance of 
Cooper, with whom actual and living American fiction 
may perhaps be said to take its rise. In England, Coop- 
er was regarded as the Scott of America; and it is to 
be regretted that Lockhart did not excise a splenetic 
personal reference to Cooper in Sir Walter's Journal. 
He was old, tired, and fatigued with the pressure of 
society in Paris when he wrote. Cooper had the genius 
to appropriate the unworked fields of American patriotic 
seafaring life, and of the manners of the Red Man; 
he is "Cooper of the wood and wave." Eagerly were 
his works read by boys, when Thackeray was a boy, 
and when I was a boy. Never shall his readers forget 
the " Long Carabine," to whom Thackeray was devoted, 
and Uncas, and Chingachgook. 

"Still we love the Delaware, 
And still we hate the Mingos." 

Doubtless Cooper's Indians are not "realistically" 
treated, though there is infinitely more of truth in his 
dignified hunters and warriors than people conversant 
only with the Red Man of to-day are ready to believe. 
But Cooper, probably, does not live with the immortality 
of his first renowned successor, Hawthorne, who, for 
secure perfection of form, is to modern fiction what Keats 
is to modern poetry. Like Scott, Hawthorne is the un- 
forced fruit of his ancestry and the society into which 
he was born — a Puritan, not a Cavalier artist, with a 

400 



LITERATURE 

background of austere faith and of old superstition, 
differentiated from that of the Covenanters by the shadow 
of deep forests and of struggles with the Indians and the 
wild things of the woods. These had passed into mellow 
memories, as, for Scott, had passed the age of witches, 
fairies, reivers, and claymores. Entirely, in the Scarlet 
Letter, as by way of hereditary influence in the House 
of Seven Gables, Hawthorne reproduced what was old, 
making it poetically enduring. His Mosses from an 
Old Manse, and other brief tales set the fashion, except 
by Poe, long unfollowed, of the conte. Neither author 
has been excelled in his own portion of this field. Haw- 
thorne's haunted consciences, Poe's treasure tale, his 
detective stories, and his tales of terror remain unequalled, 
though so profusely imitated. This epoch, say from 
1830 to 1855, was a kind of classical interspace in the 
literature of the century. France, preoccupied by war 
in the first thirty years of the age, now awoke to her own 
famous romantic era, with Hugo, Dumas, Musset, 
Gautier, George Sand, Sainte-Beuve, Merimee — names 
of the highest. Germany, to the non-Teutonic world, 
is, in poetry, represented by Heine, and, in science, 
philosophy, philology, and history by a galaxy of in- 
novators ingenious and industrious. America saw 
Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Ticknor, 
Prescott, Motley, Longfellow, Bryant, Emerson, in their 
prime ; while England had Carlyle, Tennyson, Newman, 
Browning, the Brontes, Kingsley, Thackeray, Dickens, 
and Ruskin, all recognized and flourishing. 

We look around and see, as Mr. Stevenson says in a 
letter, that "the suns have set," while we are scarcely 
conscious of new dawns. Who can explain, by circum- 
stances of social evolution and historical event, the rising 
and the setting of such constellations of genius? It is 
not enough to speak of the democratic demand, natural- 
ly indifferent to style, for never was style the object of 
2C 401 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

such anxious research, except in other ages of euphuism. 
Encouragement is even overabundant; "masterpieces" 
are announced every week, and forgotten every year. 
It may be the prejudice of hoary eld, but I must confess 
that our new literature does not seem to me to show such 
promise of permanence as the literature of 1830-1860 
gave, and, so far, has fulfilled. Has fulfilled in spite 
of our sneers at the "early Victorian," which was not 
socialistic, or evolutionist and Darwin-ridden, and was 
"respectable," and did avert its eyes from all that most 
people in real life don't care to stare at. This " prudery " 
was no new thing. The Greeks, in except some late 
decadents and in the old comedy, have a "prudish" 
literature. The Latin classics are not in the taste of M. 
Zola. The age of Chaucer, the age of Elizabeth, were 
grossly frank, that of the Restoration was frankly lewd, 
but we have sought out many inventions over which 
Sedley and Rochester would not have cared to linger. 
Their grossness was gay ; ours is morbidly squalid. Such 
things are absent from the work of Hawthorne and 
Holmes, Longfellow, Dickens, Thackeray, and the rest. 
Such things we now treat of, greatly daring, and some- 
how our elders appear apt to outlaugh and outlive us 
as humorists, novelists, and poets. It is strange. 

Into the merits of that remarkable middle age of the 
century we cannot enter in much detail. Tennyson 
holds unimperilled the throne of the poet of the time. 
That his thought is not especially penetrating, whether 
he deals with the intricacies of human character, or with 
the problems of the universe, may be readily admitted. 
But I am unaware that any poet has yet " got the abso- 
lute into a corner," or solved the problems of the uni- 
verse. Tennyson, more than people suppose, was, per- 
sonally, a mystic, with his own mystic experiences; and 
his philosophy was influenced by them. He "followed 
the Gleam." Neither in the Idylls of the King nor 

402 



LITERATURE 

in plays, was dramatic rendering of character his forte. 
His forte was charm, and music, and the interpretation 
of nature. In these he is the equal of the Mantuan, is 
the Virgil of the modern world, " golden branch among 
the shadows." Moreover, he has infinite variety: from 
Mariana to Fatima and Rizpah; from the Lotos-Eaters, 
which "adds a new charm" after the Faerie Queene, 
to the Northern Farmer, from Ulysses to Crossing the 
Bar. The early Morte a" Arthur is of unsurpassed 
nobility and magic; the last poem, Crossing the Bar, 
is no less pre-eminent in these qualities. Tennyson, in 
short, had genius; new, as all genius is new, and no 
occasional defects of taste or temper can impair the 
splendor and richness of his gift to the world, nor the 
immortality of his fame. 

His contemporary, Browning, had the misfortune to 
attract, by his faults, the people who wish to believe 
themselves clever, because they labor at appreciating 
passages which the poet had made obscure. Darkness 
is not depth, nor is obscurity a merit. From his letters 
it is plain that Mr. Browning had not the gift of lucid 
expression; from his poems it is manifest that he had 
not, in a high degree, the gift of verbal music and of 
charms. His gift of the grotesque, very real and orig- 
inal, was also his snare. In Christmas Eve and Easter 
Day, with Men and Women, we have the true essence 
of Browning at his best; we have his dramatic lyrics, 
with their amazing abundance of character and variety 
of measure. After the first fascinating volume The 
Ring and tlie Book became monotonous. One song in 
Paracelsus, to myself, seems worth all the dissection 
of character in the blank verse. There are many who 
find a kind of spiritual help in such pieces as Prospice. 
There are thousands who find in Men and Women 
a sort of intellectual enjoyment (or entertainment) 
which they can derive from no other poet who ever lived. 

403 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

An energy, life, and sympathy, breaking forth in fresh, 
unheard-of ways; vocal in strange, piercing, untried 
measures : these are the imperishable qualities of Brown- 
ing. Look at his rendering of the Agamemnon: such 
is his version of life. The poetry of iEschylus is not 
there : " carmina desunt "; but there is a new, odd, un- 
expected rendering of the traged}^. So poignant and 
broken, sad, glad, grotesque, and pitiful, was Brown- 
ing's rendering of life. He was "ever a fighter": no 
poet is more exempt from whining and despair. Des- 
tiny linked him with Mrs. Browning, whose genius, 
sincere and original, is apt to be obscured by palpable 
faults of manner, emotion, and even rhyme, on which it 
is superfluous to dwell. Her merits, and some of her 
defects, made Mrs. Browning the most popular of women 
poets in England, except, perhaps, Miss Ingelow. Both, 
in the crowd of accomplished versifiers, appear as true 
poets, though both, no doubt, fail to reach the place of 
Miss Christina Rossetti, who never can be popular. 

The matter of popularity is full of puzzles and para- 
doxes. Tennyson was popular, yet great because he 
is popular. There was a moment when popularity 
without permanence might have been expected for 
Longfellow. The excellence of his moral intentions 
was then more obvious than the poetry. Such early 
pieces as Excelsior and The Psalm of Life yield odd 
results on analysis. But not much better can be said 
for the Queen of the May, and for parts of The Miller's 
Daughter. In these is a marvellous dexterity in sink- 
ing. But sink, and remain sunk, was as little char- 
acteristic of Longfellow as of Tennyson. He was a true 
poet, in his lyrics, even in his translations, as well as in 
Evangeline, and that excellent experiment Hiaivatha, 
where the measure of the Finnish popular poems is 
applied to the not dissimilar legends of another wood- 
land race. But Longfellow lacked that undefinable 

404 



LITERATURE 

quality of the rare, the strange, the hitherto unheard 
yet delightful note which now and again is heard in the 
verse of Edgar Poe. He was an Ishmaelite in literature, 
his hand against every man's hand, and hence seems to 
be less admired where he was personally known than 
in France and England. It is not the famous Raven, 
but such pieces as To Helen, the Sleeper, and at most 
a dozen others which give Poe his high place in the judg- 
ment of his admirers. Not his ideas, but the beauty of 
his haunting lines, confers on him the laurel. Of Bryant, 
as a rule, and of Whittier almost always, the reverse is 
the truth. The acceptability of their ideas, the refined 
simplicity, not the natural magic, of their form, are their 
claims to renown. Except in a few places, as in such 
as his Commemoration Ode, Mr. Lowell is better remem- 
bered for the wit and vigor of his Biglow poems than 
for his serious verse, at least in England; while Emer- 
son's prose has precedence here over his poetry. The 
wisdom of the East and West, blended with his happy, 
courageous temper, made Emerson a corrective Carlyle, 
while Thoreau is the complement of Emerson. 

Concerning the great Victorian novelists, Thackeray 
and Dickens, so much is daily written that remark is 
superfluous. A master of observation of all that had 
rarely been observed, a generous heart, an original and 
abundant humorist, the greatest source of mirth in our 
century, Dickens appears to wear less well than his rival. 
The unapproached merits of Thackeray's style must 
preserve him in literature; his pathos is rare and un- 
forced; his form of humor is as permanent as that of 
Fielding, and as successfully matched by his phrasing. 
Even his verse, mirthful or melancholy, does not fade, 
and has its own place on the borderland of poetry. George 
Eliot's fame, too, must revive the success of her earlier 
and more humorous novels, before she became too fond of 
the Spencerian philosophy, and took herself too seriously, 

405 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

a natural result of adulation. Charlotte Bronte, in the 
same way, has been, as it were, rediscovered amid a 
chorus of fresh applauses, and with perhaps rather too 
curious investigations. In America, after Hawthorne, 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Mrs. Beecher Stowe were 
the novelists most generally admired in England, when 
Thackeray and Dickens were verging to their decline. 
It is, indeed, to be regretted that Dr. Holmes did not 
write more fiction when in his prime. His excellent and 
original Elsie Venner, and Guardian Angel, with their 
humorous pictures of real life and their thread of phan- 
tasy, half mystical, half scientific, border (as often in the 
Poet and Professor at the Breakfast Table) on the ground 
of "psychical research." Dr. Holmes was not merely, 
in verse and prose, an exquisite wit, but a man of rare 
knowledge, a man of science, and a sturdy defender of 
the purity of the language. Mrs. Beecher Stowe, on 
the other hand, took the world by storm with a vivid 
tract in the form of fiction; a book now not easy to 
criticise, but which can still move to laughter and tears. 
It is my "insular ignorance" which prevents me from 
appreciating other American fictions of that age, before 
the days of writers still happily living and working: 
Mark Twain, Bret Harte, W. D. Howells, Henry James, 
and scores of others, who, being here to speak for them- 
selves, shall not be commented upon in this place. With 
Mr. Howells, as a critic, I have tried to break lances, 
while ready to admit one of his main contentions, that 
the art of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, and others of our 
fathers would have profited much by being a finer art, 
by condensation, by omission, by avoidance of the 
superfluous. But that our modern fiction is a greater 
art, that romance and story-telling and adventure are 
obsolete, or ought to be obsolete, that I can never admit 
while human nature is human nature. Mankind will 
never be content, in fiction, with tales of the psychology 

406 



LITERATURE 

of the ordinary person ; ordinary as we are, we desire to 
be, like Homer's Heracles, conversant with great ad- 
ventures. Mr. Howells perhaps may think Aristotle a 
Greek snob when he maintains that tragedy must find 
its theme in the sorrows of the god-descended kings. 
Are not the griefs of the poor or of the middle classes as 
poignant? They are; but they do not involve such 
heights and depths of fortune, raising or wrecking whole 
states, as do the woes "of Thebes, or Atreus's line." 
The fall of Prince Charles from an hour even of shadowy 
royalty, from the leadership of an army, from the won- 
dering admiration of Europe and the applause of Vol- 
taire into the subject and dependent sot is an example of 
modern historical tragedy; in its elevation and its de- 
cline more apt to move "pity and terror" than the cir- 
cumstance that a journalist has taken to drink. 

As in the case of America, so in that 'of England, I 
cannot enter into the merits of living novelists in so 
wide a task as the brief review of a century. Mr. 
Meredith, as a veteran of the 6o's, has shown, per- 
haps, fully what is the nature of his achievement; he 
shines as a creator of character (the highest praise) 
and as a writer with a thoroughly original view of the 
world, as a poet and as a wit. That his manner is en- 
tirely fortunate, and not rather tinged with wilful ec- 
centricities like those of Browning and Carlyle, can 
scarcely be disputed. An accomplished young novel- 
ist has admitted to me that his manner is "catching," 
and that he has to struggle against half-conscious efforts 
at imitation. Others do not struggle; and most grow 
older before they are able to write like themselves, with 
their own voices. Even Mr. Stevenson was caught now 
and then, his own voice being original indeed, but yet 
full of memories of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies, and even of the Cameronian writers. To my 
mind Mr. Stevenson was the greatest, or, at least, the 

407 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

most enjoyable, of our novelists since George Eliot, 
excelling in matter and form, though probably always 
prevented by thwarting circumstances from doing him- 
self complete justice. He practically revived in England 
the novel historical, now so abundantly practised, and 
practised with spirit, by Mr. Stanley Weyman, Mr. 
Anthony Hope, Dr. Conan Doyle, Mr. A. E. W. Mason, 
and a regiment of followers. The novel scientific, as in 
the hands of Mr. Wells, and the novel of adventure, " be- 
yond the bounds of known romanticism," as in Mr. 
Rider Haggard's works, with the detective novel and the 
Oriental and imperialistic romances of Mr. Kipling, 
prove that man will not be satisfied with domestic real- 
ism alone. I never thought he would! Mr. Kipling's 
astonishing powers of vision, his habit of ruthlesslj' cut- 
ting the superfluous, and his amazing command of tech- 
nicalities, help to account for his world-wide fame. But 
the greatest of these is vision, not an acquired result of 
thought, but a gift of Heaven. The age has also pro- 
duced a wealth of novels with a purpose. Would that 
the authors could be induced to state their purposes 
squarely, in undecorative treatises! But I confess that 
the treatises would not be read. The specialism of 
modern science has also invaded fiction, and some au- 
thors find a county or a parish wide enough for the work 
of a lifetime. The district has its dialect, and who can 
reprove it when spoken by the creatures of Mr. Barrie 
and Mr. Crockett? This kind of fiction is the residt of 
our desire to learn (through novels) about the lives of 
all sorts and conditions of men. En fin, the whole scope 
of mortal existence is now the far rage libelli of the nov- 
elists who range from prehistoric man to Bethnal Green; 
from Thrums to Central Africa. There is not the same 
eagerness to read history, which James II. regarded as 
"more instructive, and quite as amusing." My heart 
is here with King James, and I confess to gaining more 

408 



LITERATURE 

entertainment from Carlyle's Frederick the Great than 
from most novels. 

The earlier historians, from Scott to Carlyle, Macau- 
lay and Froude, placed the human interest in the front 
rank. They conceived that history had to do with human 
beings of passions, caprices, moods, loves, and hates, 
dwelling in a world of interesting costumes, arms, ar- 
chitecture, ideas, and beliefs. Thus Carlyle, with much 
research, created his Cromwell or his Frederick, as Scott 
created his Queen Mary, his Louis XI., his James VI., 
or his Cromwell in Woodstock, who is not too remote 
from Carlyle's. For these reasons Scott, Froude, Car- 
lyle, and Macaulay really are " amusing " as well as in- 
structive historians. When institutions and constitu- 
tions had to be described they were placed in separate 
compartments, as in the works of Hallam and Bishop 
Stubbs. Historians studied manuscripts, of course, but 
it was not held that only the unprinted was the valua- 
ble, that a new survey of known matter was absolutely 
valueless. 

In the end of the century we have history which is not 
"as interesting as a novel " (like that of Prescott, Motley, 
Froude, and Macaulay), but very far from gay. Nov- 
elty of research is, quite justly, insisted upon (though 
research is as old as Ilemingburgh, and was much ad- 
vanced by Gibbon, Carter, Rymer, AValpole, Tytler, 
and so on) till, by a natural error, every scrap won from 
a wilderness of charters is valued beyond its deserts. 
The human interest is frowned upon; movements of 
forces, political and social, are treated in preference to 
personal character and adventure. Meticulous accu- 
racy is insisted upon, till nervous students are actually 
afraid to publish. Even Mommsen, greatest of original 
students, is regarded as frivolous, even Curtius as " pop- 
ular" by the modern school. It is natural to man to 
run into these excesses of reaction. Froude is not often 

409 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

accurate, Macaulay has prejudices, even Mr. Freeman 
was not sound about Knights' Fees and about a certain 
palisade. Now the public does not care about Knights' 
Fees or about the Manor, much; nor even about the 
obscure early history of civic institutions. In fact, 
even references to authorities frighten away part of the 
public, whose timidity I do not applaud. The results of 
our frivolity and of the portentous gravity of some mod- 
ern historians is that, since Mr. Green, scarcely any 
writer of history is read except for examinations. As 
long as historians declare (often with perfect truth) that 
their own works are not literature, but something far 
more awful and solemn, namely science, history must 
be unpopular. But we are only waiting for a man of 
genius as accurate as the most meticulous, and as in- 
teresting as the agreeably irresponsible Froude. Of 
science I am not to treat, so I am dispensed from remarks 
on our scientific modern historians. It is certain that in 
collecting and printing and calendaring documents the 
age in all countries has shown praiseworthy industry, 
while Mr. Parkman in America, like our mid-century 
historians, was not too scientific to be readable. 

Of theolog}^, except when recommended by the art of a 
Newman or a Jowett, nothing is here to be said ; though 
I could cheerfully say a good deal, especially about 
Biblical criticism. But that is science, though scarcely 
the sort of science which has been denned as " organ- 
ized common-sense." The poetry of the late century in 
England boasts the names of Rossetti, William Morris, 
Matthew Arnold, and Mr. Swinburne. It is tinged, in 
the former with mediaevalism derived from the Italians 
and Chaucer ; while in Mr. Swinburne every conceivable 
literary influence, from the Greeks to Baudelaire, from 
the Elizabethans to Victor Hugo, makes itself abun- 
dantly conspicuous. These poets, younger than Mat- 
thew Arnold, are not much influenced by Wordsworth, 

410 



LITERATURE 

though by Shelley Mr. Swinburne was influenced. On 
the other hand, Mr. Arnold was a modern, academic, 
heterodox Wordsworth, and often a truly delightful 
poet. 

He stood much aloof from the contemporary litera- 
ture of his day, and his letters prove that he was no fer- 
vent admirer even of Tennyson or Browning. His own 
poetry has been to many, as to myself, full of delightful 
passages, whether he wrote of the Oxford country-side, 
or of Wordsworth's hills, of "the shorn and parcelled 
Oxus," or of the moaning sea that Sophocles long ago 
heard as he heard it on Dover beach. He was our great- 
est modern elegiac poet; a master of the Dirge. Of the 
living, again, no criticism can be offered ; we only note 
the names, and real if very various merits, of Mr. Robert 
Bridges, Mr. Watson, Mr. Davidson, Mr. Dobson, Mr. 
Benson, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Henley, Mr. Gosse, Mr. 
Stephen Philips, Mrs. Marriott Watson, Mrs. Maynell, 
Mr. Kipling, "a nest of singing birds." It would be 
impertinent, and indeed perilous, to "draw invidious 
distinctions," as the undergraduate said about the ma- 
jor and minor prophets : nor is it for this century to 
sift the poetic sheep from the goats, who, in an age that 
reads little poetry, are greatly guilty of much verse. 

The unassuming and decried art of criticism remains. 
Essays are of no one age ; there are similar excellences 
in every good essayist since Montaigne. We have no 
Hazlitt, Lamb, or Leigh Hunt, but we had Mr. Stephenson 
and Mr. Pater, so unlike in all but conscious interest 
in style, and reminiscence of the best models. Indeed, 
essay writing is almost an unpractised art, as the public 
"has no use for it," any more than for the letter H on 
the Sandwich boards. A fairly bad novelist can live; 
to an appallingly bad novelist the workhouse unfolds its 
awful valves. In literary criticism Mr. Arnold stood 
alone in his age, and Mr. Arnold's literary income, it 

411 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

is known, surprised, when stated, the Commissioners 
of Income Tax: not by its affluence. Of living critics 
it would be in the highest degree dangerous to say a 
word, though many words, both of praise and dispraise, 
might be said of a person of reckless character. That 
(with obvious exceptions) most critics are men intimately 
familiar with what is best, from Homer to Mr. Stephen 
Philips, few students would venture to aver. That we 
(for am I not the least of all critics, and not worthy to be 
called a critic?) are entirely devoid of ignorance, personal 
bias, likes, dislikes, prejudices, pet aversions, indolence, 
we are not so blindly conceited as to maintain. We 
have been taught by many centuries of creative geniuses, 
from Theocritus to the latest protesting popular novelists, 
to know our proper place, and we take refuge in "con- 
fession and avoidance." The new century will not 
know our names when we pass where Dennis and where 
Cibber are, unless Mr. Robert Buchanan writes a new 
Dunciad. 

The century, even if we are in full decadence (of which 
we are not the best judges), has been glorious in literature, 
and holds its own well with any in modern history. 
English itself has passed from the occasionally stilted 
Augustan survival, through the novelties of Macaulay, 
De Quincey, and Carlyle, and the early decorated of Mr. 
Ruskin, into slipshod slang in one extreme, and euphu- 
ism in the other. But the main stream keeps its course, 
and English may be written with perfect purity, and with 
new fluency and variety, by the men for whom the task 
is reserved by fate. But what does the centum bequeath 
by way of intellectual motive? Little but the more or 
less transformed forces of the eighteenth century. There 
is science, but science, happily, is beginning to be aware 
that she is not really omniscient. Conceivably her 
foot is on the border of a new region, often surmised, 
never explored, full of light on the problems of spirit 

412 



LITERATURE 

and matter. Hence, indeed, might come a new force 
in letters. Again, the social ideas of 1750— 1800 may 
take practical shapes of incalculable momentousness, 
but these would not for long be favorable to literature. 
Or, less probably, the return on the past may assume 
practical shape, though this element of the later eighteenth 
century may seem, as far as letters go, to be exhausted. 
In brief, as I began by saying, the division of literary 
periods by measures of time is a cross -division. This 
peculiarity the last hundred years possess: that litera- 
ture now blossoms on a far wider field. English-speak- 
ing America had, indeed, a literature long before the 
War of Independence; but it was not a literature for 
every reader of to-day. Now, and for long, the States 
have taken their own part in history, fiction, poetry, and 
all other branches of letters. Germany came back into 
world literature again just at the ending of the eighteenth 
century, after unregarded ages of neglect. Russia and 
the Scandinavian North awoke about the same time, 
and daily widen their influence, as does Belgium in the 
sunshine of Maeterlinck. France, of course, has in 
all time been in the foremost rank; while to balance 
America, Russia, and the North, Italy and Spain have 
scarcely held the place which through so many cen- 
turies was their own. Such changes in national litera- 
tures resemble the political waxings and wanings of 
national fortunes. The English-speaking peoples may 
have their eclipse ; perhaps it is heralded by a modern 
comparative deficiency in humor which, if England and 
America cease to laugh, will die out of a profoundly 
solemn world. 

In the foregoing remarks little has been said about 
the literature of the century except among English- 
speaking peoples. Not being a Mezzofanti, I am not 
personally acquainted with the literature of all languages, 
and it is a vain thing to speak of books at second hand. 

413 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

It was not the nineteenth but the eighteenth century 
that saw Germany re-enter the field of pure literature, 
as distinguished from that of scholarship and science. 
Since the end of the Middle Ages, with their poets, 
German writers had mainly been devoted to theology 
and classical criticism. Latin was the language of the 
learned. Many ascertainable causes, in the middle and 
end of the eighteenth century, and doubtless many 
causes which cannot be ascertained, awoke again the 
Teutonic genius. The victories of Frederick the Great 
gave Germans patriotism and confidence in their own 
tongue. 

The philosophic and social works which preluded to 
the French Revolution stirred the German mind and 
required popular expression. Thus Kant wrote in his 
own native speech in reaction against the sceptical 
philosophy of David Hume, and Kant became the father 
of the long array of German metaphysicians from Hegel 
and Fichte to Schopenhauer and Hartmann. Their phil- 
osophy "cannot be briefly stated, especially in French," 
as one of them said, but its general effect has been rather 
to counteract materialism by making it pretty plain 
that human nature is not so simple and easily to be ex- 
plained as the Scottish philosophers were apt to sup- 
pose. In England, Coleridge gave an Anglican heart 
to the new German philosophy, which also influenced 
Hamilton, and still affects the philosophical teaching of 
Oxford. " It is nonsense, but is it the right sort of non- 
sense?" asked the late Professor Sidgwick (a Cambridge 
man) when struggling with the examination papers of a 
Hegelian undergraduate. 

More important as literature were the double influ- 
ences of return on the mediaeval past and of inspiration 
by the new political and social ideas which gave the 
impulse to the genius of Goethe, Schiller, Burger, and 
others. Goethe began as the child of Rousseau, but as a 

414 



LITERATURE 

child who had read Kant, and drunk deep of the romance 
of the Middle Ages. Doubtless his is the greatest name 
of modern Germany, both as a student of life, of nature, 
of history, and of thought. He was the spiritual parent 
of Scott, with his Gbtz von Berlichingen, and, with Rich- 
ter, of Carlyle. Through himself and his English or 
Scottish disciples, Goethe has been the most fertile source 
of change in the literature of the nineteenth century. 
In extreme old age, curious to say, he gave the first im- 
pulse to the study of early religion as displayed in the 
obscure rites and beliefs of the Australian natives: a 
theme remote enough from his effect on the poetry of 
Matthew Arnold. Probably the two parts of his Faust 
and his Roman Lyrics are the most popular, and, as 
literature, the most permanent parts of his work, with 
Werther, Wilhelm Meister, and Elective Affinities, in 
prose. Schiller, beginning with the boyish romanticism 
of The Robbers, became a kind of classic in his later 
dramas. Lessing and Winckelmann were the most 
sound and fertile influences in criticism. The Lao- 
coon remains indispensable. The patriotic lyrists res- 
urrected the national spirit of the Teutonic race, and 
Heine, Hebrew by race and half French in character, 
combined the characteristics of Lucian, Burns, and 
Voltaire. 

Wolf, writing in Latin (and I believe that his work 
on Homer has never attained a third edition, and has 
never been translated into English), became the parent, 
for good or evil, of what is called the Higher Criticism, 
Lachmann introducing the painfully conjectural ten- 
dencies of that intellectual exercise. Its application to 
scriptural texts is notorious, but not precisely as part 
of literature. Like other European countries, the Ger- 
many of the close of the century is not remarkable for 
resplendent genius in poetry or fiction, though novels 
abound. The scientific, historical, and scholarly litera- 

415 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ture is of vast profusion. In thoroughness and tireless 
patience, Germany is the teacher of the world, while in 
curious contrast to her practical genius is the love of 
some of her scholars for baseless conjecture. The "in- 
sularity" with which the English are charged is a matter 
of reproach by French scholars against Germany. Some 
sets of ideas, long familiar in America, England, and 
the Latin nations, are only now beginning to reach Ger- 
man classical scholars. 

To write an account of the changes in French litera- 
ture during the century is impossible within moderate 
space. The revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were 
unfavorable to the literary art, and the head of so great 
a poet as Andre Chenier fell under the guillotine. Till 
about 1 825-1 830 the Restoration was accompanied by 
literature in the old classic style of Boileau and of the 
Augustan age, only enlivened by the romantic if some- 
what affected style of that great rhetorician, Chateaubri- 
and. The year 1830 is the sacred year of French ro- 
manticism, drawing its ideals partly from the German 
romantic movement, partly from Scott and Shakespeare, 
read, of course, onlj^ in translations. Everj-thing was 
now to be mediaeval, Spanish, and passionate : the drama 
was to be emancipated from Aristotle, also read in trans- 
lations. As far as classicism went the 3 T oung advent- 
urers had no more Greek than Shakespeare or Scott. 
But they had the colossal and Titanic genius of Hugo, 
exquisitely sweet, rapid, strange, and versatile in lyric : 
potent, if inflated, in the drama and the novel. They 
had the charming humor and exquisite taste of Theophile 
Gautier; the feverish passion and mastery in verse of 
Alfred de Musset ; the delicate, dreamy, and wandering 
spirit of Gerard de Nerval ; and the manly, courageous, 
humorous, and unwearied vigor, in drama and in fic- 
tion, of Alexandre Dumas. 

This was, indeed, an extraordinary generation, by 

416 



LITERATURE 

far the greatest since that of Corneille, Racine, and Mo- 
liere. Many others might be named : the reserved 
force and incisive irony of Merimee ; the learned and ge- 
nial criticism of Sainte-Beuve ; the inexhaustible talent 
of George Sand, and the mighty Balzac, the maker and 
founder of the modern work of introspection. Prob- 
ably, of all these writers, Dumas and Balzac have ex- 
ercised most influence on later fiction in England and 
America. Flaubert continued, with painful elaboration, 
the traditions of Balzac ; from Flaubert, and round him, 
grew up Daudet and M. Zola, and the Goncourts. Po- 
etry, after Lamartine, dwindled into the prettinesses of 
the Parnasse and the eccentricities, too obviously in- 
tentional, of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and the Symbolistes. 
Literary art, at the end of the century, became too self- 
conscious, too fond of argument about ideals and meth- 
ods, the tattle of the studio. Great men have not thus 
dissipated their energy; they have done what they 
could do; they have not talked about how they did it. 
What English literature was borrowed from France, at 
this time, is more in the nature of words than work. 
Criticism has been a chimaera bombinans in vacuo, chat- 
tering about realism, naturalism, symbolism, the use of 
documents, and so forth. The defects, rather than the 
merits, of France have been imitated ; a squalid pessi- 
mism is easily affected. 

The closing century has seen Russia awake, as the 
close of the eighteenth century beheld the literary revival 
of Germany. Russian poetry has only reached the 
learned among us : the novels of Turguenieff, Dustoicf- 
sky, and Tolstoi are read in translation, with curiosity, 
antipathy, enthusiasm, and an absence of that emotion. 
It is very long since Terentianus Maurus remarked that 
the fortunes of a book depended on the taste of the reader. 
Often he is favorably impressed, not by the actual merit 
of the story as a story or as a work of literary art, but by 
2D 417 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

its appeal to his private sentiments, as of socialism, 
pessimism, toryism, or whatever they may be. Possibly 
the vehement admirers of some Russian writers have 
been thus misguided. In any case, no qualified critic 
thinks that his opinion of works which he cannot read in 
the original language is of any value. For this reason 
I need not offend or please the reader by offering any 
uninstructed sentiments about the great Scandinavian 
dramatist, Dr. Ibsen ; or concerning the work of Signor 
d'Annunzio, or the plays of M. Maeterlinck. To pro- 
nounce each of these gentlemen a Shakespeare or iEschy- 
lus is not unusual in cultivated circles; it remains for 
the new century to ratify or quash the verdict. In the 
mean time, have the approving critics taken the pre- 
caution of reading iEschylus and Shakespeare? 

Andrew Lang. 



ENGINEERING 



ENGINEERING 

"THE material prosperity of the last century is due to 
*■ the co-operation of three classes of men : the man of 
science, who lives only for truth and the discovery of 
nature's laws; the inventor, eager to apply these dis- 
coveries to money - making machines and processes, 
and the engineer, trained in mathematical investigation 
and in knowledge of the physical conditions which gov- 
ern his profession, which is the mechanical application 
of the laws of nature. 

Engineering is sometimes divided into civil, military, 
and naval engineering. The term civil engineering, 
which will be here described, is often used by writers 
as covering structural engineering only, but it has a 
much wider meaning. 

The logical classification is : statical engineering, in- 
cluding that of all fixed bodies, and dynamical, cover- 
ing the movement of all bodies by the development and 
application of power. 

Statical engineering can be again subdivided into 
structural engineering, or that of railways, highways, 
bridges, foundations, tunnels, buildings, etc. ; also, 
into hydraulic engineering, which governs the applica- 
tion of water to canals, river improvements, harbors, 
the supply of water to towns and for irrigation, disposal 
of sewage, etc. 

Dynamical engineering can be divided into mechanical 
engineering, which covers the construction of all prime 
motors, the transmission of power, and the use of machines 

421 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

and machine tools. Closely allied is electrical engineer- 
ing, the art of the transformation and transmission of 
energy for traction, lighting, telegraphy, telephoning, 
operating machinery, and many other uses, such as its 
electrolytic application to ores and metals. 

Then we have the combined application of statical, 
mechanical, and electrical engineering to what is now 
called industrial engineering, or the production of ar- 
ticles useful to man. This may be divided into agricult- 
ural, mining, metallurgical, and chemical engineering. 

Surely this is a vast field, and can only be hastily de- 
scribed in the sketch which we are about to give. 

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING 

This is the oldest of all. We have not been able to 
surpass the works of the past in grandeur or durability. 
The pyramids of Egypt still stand, and will stand for 
thousands of years. Roman bridges, aqueducts, and 
sewers still perform their duties. Joseph's canal still 
irrigates Lower Egypt. The great wall of China, running 
for fifteen hundred miles over mountains and plains, 
contains one hundred and fifty millions of cubic yards 
of materials and is the greatest of artificial works. No 
modern building compares in grandeur with St. Peter's, 
and the mediaeval cathedrals shame our puny imitations. 

These mighty works were built to show the piety of 
the Church or to gratify the pride of kings. Time and 
money were of no account. All this has now been 
changed. Capital controls, and the question of time, 
money, and usefulness rules everything. Hence come 
scientific design and labor-saving machinery. 

The engineer of our modern works first calculates 
the stresses on all their parts, and proportions them 
accordingly, so that there is no waste of material. Hand 
labor has given place to steam machinery. All parts 

422 



ENGINEERING 

are interchangeable, so that they can be made and fitted 
together in the least possible time, as is seen every day 
in the construction of a steel -framed office building. 
Our workmen receive much higher wages than in the 
past, while time and cost have been diminished. 

RAILWAYS 

The greatest engineering work of the nineteenth 
century was the development of the railway system 
which has changed the face of the world. Beginning 
in 1829 with the locomotive of George Stephenson, it 
has extended with such strides that, after seventy years, 
there are 466,000 miles of railways in the world, of 
which 190,000 miles are in the United States. Their 
cost is estimated at forty thousand millions of dollars, 
of which ten thousand millions belong to the United 
States. 

The rapidity with which railways are built in the 
United States and Canada contrasts strongly with what 
has been done in other countries. Much has been written 
of the energy of Russia in building 3000 miles of Siberian 
railway in five or six years. In the United States an 
average of 6147 miles was completed every year during 
ten successive years, and in 1887 there were built 12,982 
miles. The physical difficulties overcome in Siberia 
are no greater than have been overcome here. 

This rapid construction is due to several causes, the 
most potent of which has been the need of extending 
railways over great distances with little money. Hence 
they were built economically, and at first in not as solid 
a manner as those of Europe. Steeper gradients, sharp- 
er curves, and lighter rails were used. This rendered 
necessary a different kind of rolling-stock suitable to 
such construction. The swivelling-truck and equal- 
izing-beam enabled our engines to run safely on tracks 

423 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

where the rigid European engines would soon have 
been in the ditch. 

Our cars were made longer, and by the use of lon- 
gitudinal framing much stronger. A great economy- 
came from the use of annealed cast-iron wheels, with 
hardened tires, all in one piece, instead of being built up 
of spokes, hubs, and tires in separate parts. These wheels 
now seldom break, and cost much less than European 
wheels. As there are some eleven million car-wheels in 
use in the United States the resulting economy is great. 

It was soon seen that longer cars would carry a greater 
proportion of paying load, and the more cars that one 
engine could draw in a train, the less would be the cost. 
It was not until the invention by Bessemer in 1864 of 
a steel of quality and cost that made it available for 
rails that much heavier cars and locomotives could be 
used. Then came a rapid increase. As soon as Bes- 
semer rails were made in this country, the cost fell from 
$175 per ton to $50, and now to $26. 

Before that time a wooden car weighed sixteen tons, 
and could carry a paying load of fifteen tons. The 
thirty-ton engines of those days could not draw on a 
level over thirty cars weighing 900 tons. 

The pressed steel car of to-day weighs no more than 
the wooden car, but carries a paying load of fifty tons. 
The heaviest engines have now drawn on a level fifty 
steel cars, weighing 3750 tons. In the one case the pay- 
ing load of an engine was 450 tons ; now it is 2500 tons. 

Steep grades soon developed a better brake system, 
and these heavier trains have led to the invention of the 
automatic brake worked from the engine, and also auto- 
matic couplers, saving time and many lives. The ca- 
pacity of our railways has been greatly increased by 
the use of electric block-signals. 

The perfecting of both the railway and its rolling- 
stock has led to remarkable results, 

424 



ENGINEERING 

We have no accurate statistics of the early operation 
of American railways. In 1867 Poor's Manual esti- 
mated their total freight tonnage at 75,000,000 and 
the total freight receipts at $400,000,000. This was an 
average rate per ton of $5.33. 

In 1899 Poor gives the total freight tonnage at 975,- 
789,941 tons, and the freight receipts at $922,436,314, or 
an average rate per ton of ninety-five cents. Had the 
rates of 1867 prevailed, the additional yearly cost to the 
public would have been $4,275,000,000, or sufficient to 
replace the whole railway system in two and a half years. 

This is an illustration only, but a very striking one. 
Everybody knows that such high rates of freight as 
those of 1867 would have checked traffic. This much 
can surely be said : the reduction in cost of operating 
our railways, and the consequent fall in freight rates, 
have been potent factors in enabling the United States 
to send abroad last year $1,456,000,000 worth of exports 
and flood the world with our food and manufactured 
products. 

BRIDGE BUILDING 

In early days the building of a bridge was a matter of 
great ceremony, and it was consecrated to protect it from 
evil spirits. Its construction was controlled by priests, 
as the title of the Pope of Rome, "Pontifex Maximus," 
indicates. 

Railways changed all this. Instead of the picturesque 
stone bridge, whose long line of low arches harmonized 
with the landscape, there came the straight girder or 
high truss, ugly indeed, but quickly built, and costing 
much less. 

Bridge construction has made greater progress in the 
United States than abroad. The heavy trains that we 
have described called for stronger bridges. The large 
American rolling-stock is not used in England, and but 

425 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

little on the continent of Europe, as the width of tunnels 
and other obstacles will not allow of it. It is said that 
there is an average of one bridge for every three miles of 
railway in the United States, making 63,000 bridges, 
most of which have been replaced by new and stronger 
ones during the last twenty years. 

This demand has brought into existence many bridge- 
building companies, some of whom make the whole 
bridge, from the ore to the finished product. 

Before the advent of railways, highway bridges in 
America were made of wood, and called trusses. Few 
of them existed before railways. The large rivers and 
estuaries were crossed in horse-boats, a trip more danger- 
ous than an Atlantic voyage now is. A few smaller 
rivers had wooden truss bridges. Although originally 
invented by Leonardo da Vinci, in the sixteenth century, 
they were reinvented by American carpenters. Some 
of Burr's bridges are still standing after more than one 
hundred years' use. This shows what wood can do 
when not overstrained and protected from weather and 
fire. 

The coming of railways required a stronger type of 
bridge to carry concentrated loads, and the Howe truss, 
with vertical iron rods, was invented, capable of 150-foot 
spans. 

About 1868 iron bridges began to take the place of 
wooden bridges. Die-forged eyebars and pin connec- 
tions allowed of longer panels and longer spans. One of 
the first long-span bridges was a single-track railway 
bridge of 400-foot span over the Ohio at Cincinnati, which 
was considered to be a great achievement in 1870. 

The Kinzua viaduct, 310 feet high and over half a 
mile long, belongs to this era. It is the type of the nu- 
merous high viaducts now so common. 

About 1885 a new material was given to engineers, 
having greater strength and tenacity than iron, and 

426 



ENGINEERING 

commercially available from its low cost. This is basic 
steel. After many experiments, the proper proportions 
of carbon, phosphorus, sulphur, and manganese were 
ascertained, and uniformity resulted. The open-hearth 
process is now generally used. This new chemical met- 
al, for such it is, is fifty per cent, stronger than iron, 
and can be tied in a knot when cold. 

The effect of improved devices and the use of steel is 
shown by the weights of the 400-foot Ohio River iron 
bridge, built in 1870, and a bridge at the same place, 
built in 1886. 

The bridge of 1870 was of iron, had panels twelve feet 
long, and its height was forty-five feet, and span 400 
feet. 

The bridge of 1886 was of steel, had panels thirty feet 
long, and its height was eighty feet. Its span was 550 
feet. The weights of the two were nearly alike. 

The cantilever design, which is a revival of a very 
ancient type, came into use. The great Forth Bridge, 
in Scotland, 1600-foot span, is of this style, as are the 
500-foot spans at Poughkeepsie, and now a new one is 
being designed to cross the St. Lawrence near Quebec, 
of 1800-foot span. 

This is probably near the economic limit of cantilever 
construction, but the suspension bridge can be extended 
much farther, as it carries no dead weight of compres- 
sion members. 

The Niagara Suspension Bridge, of 810-foot span, 
built by Roebling, in 1852, and the Brooklyn Bridge, 
of 1600 feet, built by Roebling and his son, twenty years 
after, marked a wonderful advance in bridge design. 

Thirty years later, when a new bridge of 1600 feet 
was wanted to cross another part of the East River at 
New York, the same lines of construction were followed, 
and they will be followed in the 2700-foot span, designed 
to cross the North River some time in the present cen- 

427 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

tury. The only radical advance is the use of a better 
steel than could be had in earlier days. 

Steel-arched bridges are now scientifically designed. 
Such are the new Niagara Bridge, of 840-foot span, and 
the Alexandra Bridge at Paris. 

It is curious to see how little is said about these beau- 
tiful bridges, which the public takes as a matter of course. 
If they had been built fifty years ago, their engineers 
would have received the same praise as Robert Stephen- 
son or Roebling, and justly so, as they would have been 
men of exceptional genius. When these bridges were 
built, in 1898, the path had been made so clear by math- 
ematical investigation and the command of a better 
steel, that the task seemed easy. 

That which marks more clearly than anything else 
the great advance in American bridge building, during 
the last forty years, is the reconstruction of the famous 
Victoria Bridge, over the St. Lawrence, above Montreal. 
This bridge was designed by Robert Stephenson, and the 
stone piers are a monument to his engineering skill. 
For forty winters they have resisted the great fields of 
ice borne by a rapid current. Their dimensions were 
so liberal that the new bridge was put upon them, al- 
though four times as wide as the old one. 

The superstructure was originally made of plate-iron 
tubes, reinforced by tees and angles, similar to Stephen- 
son's Menai Straits Bridge. There are twenty -two 
spans of 240 feet each, and a central one of 330 feet. 
Perhaps these tubes were the best that could be had at 
the time, but they had outlived their usefulness. Their 
interiors had become greatly corroded by the confined 
gases from the engines and the drippings from the 
chemicals used in cold-storage cars. Their height was 
insufficient for modern large cars, and the confined 
smoke made them so dark that the number of trains was 
greatly limited. 

428 



ENGINEERING 

It was decided to build a new bridge of open-work 
construction and of open-hearth steel. This was done, 
and the comparison is as follows : Old bridge, sixteen 
feet wide, single track, live load of one ton per foot ; new 
bridge, sixty-seven feet wide, two railway tracks and 
two carriage-ways, live load five tons per foot. 

The old iron tubes weighed 10,000 tons, cost $2,713,- 
000, and took two seasons to erect. The new truss 
bridge weighs 22,000 tons, has cost between $1,300,000 
and $1,400,000, and the time of construction was one 
year. 

During his experience the writer has seen the rolling- 
load of bridges increase from 2000 to 4000 pounds per 
lineal foot of track, with an extra allowance for con- 
centrated loads. 

The modern high office building is an interesting 
example of the evolution of a high-viaduct pier. Such 
a pier of the required dimensions, strengthened by more 
columns strong enough to carry many floors, is the 
skeleton frame. Enclose the sides with brick, stone, or 
terra-cotta, add windows, and doors, and elevators, and 
it is complete. 

Fortunately for the stability of these high buildings, 
the effect of wind pressures had been studied in this 
country in the designs of the Kinzua, Pecos, and other 
high viaducts. 

All this had been thoroughly worked out and known 
to our engineers before the fall of the Tay Bridge in 
Scotland. That disastrous event led to very careful 
experiments on wind pressures by Sir Benjamin Baker, 
the very eminent engineer of the Forth Bridge. His 
experiments showed that a wind gauge of 300 square 
feet area showed a maximum pressure of thirty-five 
pounds per square foot, while a small one of one foot 
and a half square area registered gusts of forty-one 
pounds per square foot. 

429 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

The modern elevated railway of cities is simply a very 
long railway viaduct. Some idea may be gained of the 
life of a modern riveted -iron structure from the ex- 
perience of the Manhattan Elevated Railway of New 
York. These roads were built in 1878—79 to carry uni- 
form loads of 1600 pounds per lineal foot, except Second 
Avenue, which was made to carry 2000. The stresses 
were below 10,000 pounds per square inch. 

These viaducts have carried in twenty-two years over 
25,000,000 trains, weighing over 3,000,000,000 tons, at a 
maximum speed of twenty-five miles an hour, and are 
still in good order. 

Bridge engineers of the present day are free from the 
difficulties which confronted the early designers of iron 
bridges. The mathematics of bridge design was un- 
derstood in 1870, but the proportioning of details had 
to be worked out individually. Every new span was a 
new problem. Now the engineer tells his draughtsman 
to design a span of a given length, height, and width, 
and to carry such a load. By the light of experience he 
does this at once. 

Connections have become standardized so that the du- 
plication of parts can be carried to its fullest extent. 

Machine tools are used to make every part of a bridge, 
and power riveters to fasten them together. Great ac- 
curacy can now be had, and the sizes of parts have in- 
creased in a remarkable degree. 

We have now great bridge companies, which are so 
completely equipped with appliances for both shop draw- 
ings and construction that the old joke becomes almost 
true that they can make bridges and sell them by the mile. 

All improvements of design are now public property. 
All that the bridge companies do is done in the fierce 
light of competition. Mistakes mean ruin, and the 
fittest only survives. 

Having such powerful aids, the American bridge 

430 



ENGINEERING 

engineer of to-day has advantages over his predecessors 
and over his European brethren, where the American 
system has not yet been adopted. 

The American system gives the greatest possible 
rapidity of erection of the bridge on its piers. A span 
of 518 feet, weighing 1000 tons, was erected at Cairo on 
the Mississippi in six days. The parts were not assem- 
bled until they were put upon the false works. European 
engineers have sometimes ordered a bridge to be riveted 
together complete in the maker's yard, and then taken 
apart. 

The adoption of American work in such bridges as 
the Atbara in South Africa, the Gokteik viaduct in Bur- 
mah, 320 feet high, and others, was due to low cost, 
quick delivery and erection, as well as excellence of 
material and construction. 

FOUNDATIONS, ETC. 

Bridges must have foundations for their piers. Up 
to the middle of the nineteenth century engineers knew 
no better way of making them than by laying bare the 
bed of the river by a pumped-out cofferdam, or by driving 
piles into the sand, as Julius Caesar did. About the 
middle of the century, M. Triger, a French engineer, con- 
ceived the first plan of a pneumatic foundation, which led 
to the present system of compressing air by pumping it 
into an inverted box, called a caisson, with air locks on 
top to enable men and materials to go in and out. After 
the soft materials were removed, and the caisson sunk 
by its own weight to the proper depth, it was filled with 
concrete. The limit of depth is that in which men can 
work in compressed air without injury, and this is not 
much over one hundred feet. 

The foundations of the Brooklyn and St. Louis bridges 
were put down in this manner. 

431 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

In the construction of the Poughkeepsie bridge over 
the Hudson in 1887—88, it became necessary to go down 
135 feet below tide-level before hard bottom was reached. 
Another process was invented to take the place of com- 
pressed air. Timber caissons were built, having double 
sides, and the spaces between them filled with stone to 
give weight. Their tops were left open and the American 
single-bucket dredge was used. This bucket was lowered 
and lifted by a very long wire rope worked by the engine, 
and with it the soft material was removed. By moving 
this bucket to different parts of the caisson its sinking 
was perfectly controlled, and the caisson finally placed in 
its exact position, and perfectly vertical. The internal 
space was then filled with concrete laid under water by 
the same bucket, and levelled by divers when necessary. 

While this work was going on, the government of New 
South Wales, in Australia, called for both designs and 
tenders for a bridge over an estuary of the sea called 
Hawkesbury. The conditions were the same as at 
Poughkeepsie, except that the soft mud reached to a 
depth of 160 feet below tide-level. 

The designs of the engineers of the Poughkeepsie 
bridge were accepted, and the same method of sinking 
open caissons (in this case made of iron) was carried 
out with perfect success. 

The erection of this bridge involved another difficult 
problem. The mud was too soft and deep for piles and 
staging, and the cantilever system in this site would 
have increased the cost. 

A staging was built on a large pontoon at the shore, 
and the span erected upon it. The whole was then towed 
out to the bridge site at high tide. As the tide fell, the 
pontoon was lowered and the steel girder was placed 
gently on its piers. The whole operation was com- 
pleted within six hours. The other five spans were 
placed in the same manner. 

432 



ENGINEERING 

The same system was followed afterwards by the en- 
gineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway in placing the 
spans of a bridge over the St. Lawrence, in a very rapid 
current. It is now used in replacing old spans by new 
ones, as it interrupts traffic for the least possible time. 

The solution of the problems presented at Hawkesbury 
gave the second introduction of American engineers to 
bridge building outside of America. The first was in 
1786, when an American carpenter or shipwright built 
a bridge over Charles River at Boston, 1470 feet long by 
forty-six feet wide. This bridge was of wood supported 
on piles. His work gained for him such renown that 
he was called to Ireland and built a similar bridge at 
Belfast. 

Tunnelling by compressed air is a horizontal applica- 
tion of compressed-air foundations. The earth is sup- 
ported by an iron tube, which is added to in rings, which 
are pushed forward by hydraulic jacks. 

A tunnel is now being made under an arm of the sea 
between Boston and East Boston, some 1400 feet long 
and sixty-five feet below tide. The interior lining of 
iron tubing is not used. The tunnel is built of concrete, 
reinforced by steel rods. This will effect a considerable 
economy. Success in modern engineering means doing a 
thing in the most economical way consistent with safety. 

The Saint Clair tunnel, which carries the Grand Trunk 
Railway of Canada under the outlet of Lake Huron, 
is a successful example of such work. Had the North 
River tunnel, at New York, been designed on equally 
scientific principles, it would probably have been finished, 
which now seems problematical. 

The construction of rapid-transit railways in cities 
is another branch of engineering, covering structural, 
mechanical, and electrical engineering. Some of these 
railways are elevated, and are merely railway viaducts, 
but the favorite type now is that of subways. There 
2E 433 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

are two kinds, those near the surface, like the District 
railways of London, the subways in Paris, Berlin, and 
Boston, and that now building in New York. The 
South London and Central London, and other London 
projects, are tubes sunk fifty to eighty feet below the 
surface and requiring elevators for access. These are 
made on a plan devised by Greathead, and consist of 
cast-iron tubes pushed forward by hydraulic rams, and 
having the space outside of the tube filled with liquid 
cement pumped into place. 

The construction of the Boston subway was difficult 
on account of the small width of the streets, their great 
traffic, and the necessity of underpinning the founda- 
tions of buildings. All of this was successfully done 
without disturbing the traffic for a single day, and re- 
flects great credit on the engineer. Owing to the great 
width of New York streets, the problem is simpler in 
that respect, but requires skill in design and organiza- 
tion to complete the work in a short time. Although 
many times as long as the Boston subway, it will be built 
in nearly the same time. The design, where in earth, 
may be compared to that of a steel office building twenty 
miles long, laid flat on one of its sides. The reduplica- 
tion of parts saves time and labor, and is the key to the 
anticipated rapid progress. Near the surface this sub- 
way is built in open excavation, and tunnelling is con- 
fined to rock. 

The construction of power-houses for developing en- 
ergy from coal and from falling water requires much 
structural besides electrical and mechanical engineering 
ability. The Niagara power-house is intended to de- 
velop 100,000 horse-power; that at the Sault Ste. Marie 
as much; that on the St. Lawrence, at Massena, 70,000 
horse-power. These are huge works, requiring tunnels, 
rock-cut chambers, and masonry and concrete in walls 
and dams. They cover large extents of territory. 

434 



ENGINEERING 

The contrast in size of the coal-using power-houses 
is interesting. The new power-house now building 
by the Manhattan Elevated Railway, in New York, de- 
velops in the small space of 200 by 400 feet 100,000 horse- 
power, or as much power as that utilized at Niagara Falls. 

One of the most useful materials which modern engi- 
neers now make use of is concrete, which can be put into 
confined spaces and laid under water. It costs less 
than masonry, while as strong. This is the revival of 
the use of a material used by the Romans. The writer 
was once allowed to climb a ladder and look at the con- 
struction of a dome of the Pantheon, at Rome. He 
found it a monolithic mass of concrete, and hence with- 
out thrust. It is a better piece of engineering construc- 
tion than the dome of St. Peter's, built fifteen hundred 
years later. The dome of Columbia College Library, in 
New York, is built of concrete. 

Concrete is a mixture of broken stone or gravel, sand, 
and Portland cement. Its virtue depends upon the 
uniform good quality of the cement. The use of the 
rotary kiln, which exposes all the contained material to 
a uniform and constant intense heat, has revolutionized 
the manufacture of Portland cement. The engineer 
can now depend upon its uniformity of strength. 

Wheels, axles, bridges, and rails have all been strength- 
ened to carry their increased loads ; but, strange to say, 
the splices which hold in place the ends of the rails, and 
which are really short-span bridges, are now the weakest 
part of a railway. The angle-bar splice has but one- 
third of the strength of the rail, and its strength cannot 
be increased, owing to its want of depth. Joints go 
down under every passing wheel, and the ends of the 
rails wear out long before the rest. 

This is not an insignificant detail. It has been esti- 
mated by the officers of one of the trunk lines that a splice 
of proper design and strength would save yearly enough 

435 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

in track labor (most of which is expended in tamping up 
low joints) to buy all the new rails and fastenings re- 
quired in some time. It would save much more than 
that in the wear of rolling-stock. A perfect joint would 
be an economic device next in value to the Bessemer 
steel rail. Here is a place for scientific and practical 
skill. 

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING 

This is one of the oldest branches of engineering, and 
was developed before the last century. The irrigation 
works of Asia, Africa, Spain, Itaty, the Roman aque- 
ducts, and the canals of Europe, are examples. Hy- 
draulic works cannot be constructed in ignorance of the 
laws which govern the flow of water. The action of 
water is relentless, as ruined canals, obstructed rivers, 
and washed-out dams testify. 

The principal additions of the nineteenth century to 
hydraulic engineering are the collection of larger sta- 
tistics of the flow of water in pipes and channels, of rain- 
fall, run-off, and available supply. It is now known 
that the germs of disease can be retained by ordinary 
sand filters, and it is now an established fact that pure 
drinking water and proper drainage are a sure preventive 
of typhoid and similar fevers. Very foul water can be 
made potable. Experiments show that the water of the 
Schuylkill River at Philadelphia, which contains 400,- 
000 germs in the space of less than a cubic inch, was so 
much purified by filtering that only sixty remained. 
This is a discovery of sanitary science, but the applica- 
tion of it is through structural engineering, which de- 
signs and executes the filter beds with great economy. 

The removal of sewage, after having been done by 
the Etruscans before the foundation of Rome, became a 
lost art during the dirty Dark Ages, when filth and piety 
were deemed to be connected in some mysterious way. 

436 



ENGINEERING 

It was reserved for good John Wesley to point out that 
"Cleanliness is next to godliness." Now sewage works 
are as common as those for water supply. Some of them 
have been of great size and cost. Such are the drainage 
works of London, Paris, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, and 
New Orleans. A very difficult work was the drainage 
of the City of Mexico, which is in a valley surrounded 
by mountains, and elevated only four to five feet above a 
lake having no outlet. Attempts to drain the lake had 
been made in vain for six hundred years. It has lately 
been accomplished by a tunnel six miles long through 
the mountains, and a canal of over thirty miles, the whole 
work costing some $20,000,000. 

The drainage of Chicago by locks and canal into the 
Illinois River has cost some $35,000,000, and is well 
worth its cost. 

Scientific research has been applied to the designing 
of high masonry and concrete dams, and we know now 
that no well-designed dam on a good foundation should 
fail. The dams now building across the Nile by order 
of the British government will create the largest arti- 
ficial lakes in the world. The water thus stored will 
be of inestimable value in irrigating the crops of Lower 
Egypt. Their cost, although great, will not exceed the 
sums spent by the lavish Khedive Ismail on useless 
palaces, now falling to decay. 

The Suez Canal is one of the largest hydraulic works 
of the last century, and is a notable instance of the dis- 
placement of hand labor by the use of machinery. Is- 
mail began by impressing a large part of the peasant 
population of Egypt, just as Rameses had done over 
3000 years before. These unfortunate people were 
set to dig the sand with rude hoes, and carry it 
away in baskets on their heads. They died by thou- 
sands for want of water and proper food. At last the 
French engineers persuaded the Khedive to let them in- 

437 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

troduce steam dredging machinery. A light railway 
was laid to supply provisions, and a small ditch dug to 
bring pure water. The number of men employed fell 
to one-fourth. Machinery did the rest. But for this 
the canal would never have been finished. 

The Panama Canal now uses the best modern ma- 
chinery, and the Nicaragua Canal, if built, will apply 
still better methods, developed on the Chicago drainage 
canal, where material was handled at a less cost than 
has ever been done before. 

Russia is better supplied with internal waterways than 
any other country. Her rivers rise near each other, and 
have long been connected by canals. It is stated that 
she has over 60,000 miles of internal navigation, and 
is now preparing the construction of canals to connect 
the Caspian with the Baltic Sea. 

The Erie Canal was one of very small cost, but its 
influence has been surpassed by none. The "winning 
of the West" was hastened many years by the con- 
struction of this work in the first quarter of the century. 
Two horses were just able to draw a ton of goods at the 
speed of two miles an hour over the wretched roads of 
those days. When the canal was made these two horses 
could draw a boat carrying 150 tons four miles an hour. 
Mud, or, in other words, friction, is the great enemy of 
civilization, and canals were the first things to diminish 
it, and after that railways. 

The Erie Canal was made by engineers, but it had to 
make its own engineers first, as there were none available 
in this country at that time. These self-taught men, 
some of them land surveyors and others lawyers, showed 
themselves the equals of the Englishmen Brindley and 
Smeaton, when they located a water route through the 
wilderness, having a uniform descent from Lake Erie 
to the Hudson, and which would have been so built if 
there had been enough money. 

438 



ENGINEERING 

The question now is whether to enlarge the capacity 
of this canal by enlarging its prism and locks, or to in- 
crease speed and move more boats in a season by elec- 
trical appliances. The last method seems more in line 
with those of the present day. 

There should be a waterway from the Hudson to Lake 
Erie large enough for vessels able to navigate the lakes 
and the ocean. A draft of twenty-one feet can be had 
at a cost estimated at $200,000,000. 

The deepening of the Chicago drainage canal to the 
Mississippi River, and the deepening of the Mississippi 
itself to the Gulf of Mexico, is a logical sequence of the 
first project. The Nicaragua Canal would then form 
one part of a great line of navigation, by which the 
products of the interior of the continent could reach 
either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. 

The cost would be small compared with the resulting 
benefits, and some day this navigation will be built by 
the government of the United States. 

The deepening of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi 
River from six to thirty feet by James B. Eads was a 
great engineering achievement. It was the first applica- 
tion of the jetty system on a large scale. This is merely 
confining the flow of a river, and thus increasing its 
velocity so that it secures a deeper channel for itself. 

The improvement of harbors follows closely the in- 
creased size of ocean and lake vessels. The approach 
to New York harbor is now being deepened to forty feet, 
a thing impossible to be done without the largest appli- 
cation of steam machinery in a suction dredge boat. 

The great increase of urban population, due to steam 
and electric railways, has made works of water supply 
and drainage necessary everywhere. Some of these 
are on a very grand scale. An illustration of this is 
the Croton Aqueduct of New York as it now is, and as it 
will be hereafter. 

439 i 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

This work was thought by its designers to be on a 
scale large enough to last for all time. It is now less 
than sixty years old, and the population of New York 
will soon be too large to be supplied by it. 

It is able to supply 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 gallons 
daily, and its cost, when the Cornell dam and Jerome 
Park reservoir are finished, will be a little over $92,- 
000,000. 

It is now suggested to store water in the Adirondack 
Mountains, 203 miles away, by dams built at the outlet 
of ten or twelve lakes. This will equalize the flow of 
the Hudson River so as to give 3,000,000,000 to 4,000,- 
000,000 gallons daily. It is then proposed to pump 
1,000,000,000 gallons daily from the Hudson River at 
Poughkeepsie, sixty miles away, to a height sufficient 
to supply the city by gravity through an aqueduct. 
This water would be filtered at Poughkeepsie, and we 
now know that all impurities can be removed. 

If this scheme is carried out, the total supply will be 
about 1,300,000,000 gallons daily, or enough for a pop- 
ulation of from 12,000,000 to 13,000,000 persons. By 
putting in more pumps, filter-beds, and conduits, this 
supply can be increased forty per cent., or to 1,800,000,000 
gallons daily. This water would fill every day a lake 
one mile square by ten feet deep. This is a fair example 
of the scale of the engineering works of the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries. 

By the application of modern labor-saving machinery, 
the cost of this work can be so far controlled that the cost 
to the city of New York per 1,000,000 gallons would 
be no greater than that of the present Croton supply. 

All works of hydraulic engineers depend on water. 
But what will happen if the water all dries up? India, 
China, Spain, Turkey, and Syria have suffered from 
droughts, caused clearly by the destruction of their 
forests. The demand for paper to print books and news- 

440 



ENGINEERING 

papers upon, and for other purposes, is fast converting 
our forests into pulp. We cannot even say, "After us 
the deluge," for it will seldom rain in those evil days. 
When the rains do come, the sponge-like vegetation of 
the forests being gone, the streams will be torrents at 
one time of the year and dried up during the rest, as we 
now see in the arid regions of the West. 

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 

This is employed in all dynamical engineering. It 
covers the designs of prime motors of all sorts, steam, 
gas, and gasoline reciprocating engines; also steam 
and water turbines, wind-mills, and wave-motors. 

It comprises all means of transmitting power, as by 
shafting, ropes, pneumatic pressure, and compressed 
air, all of which seem likely to be superseded by elec- 
tricity. 

It covers the construction of machine tools and ma- 
chinery of all kinds. It enters into all the processes of 
structural, hydraulic, electrical, and industrial engi- 
neering. The special improvements are: The almost 
universal use of rotary motion, and of the reduplication 
of parts. 

The steam-engine is a machine of reciprocating, con- 
verted into rotary, motion by the crank. The progress 
of mechanical engineering during the nineteenth century 
is measured by the improvements of the steam-engine, 
principally in the direction of saving fuel, by the 
invention of internal combustion or gas-engines, the 
application of electrical transmission, and, latest, the 
practical development of steam turbines by Parsons, 
Westinghouse, Delaval, Curtis, and others. In these 
a jet of steam impinges upon buckets set upon the cir- 
cumference of a wheel. It was clearly indicated by the 
Italian engineer Bronca, in 1629, but he was too early. 

441 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

The time was not ripe, and there were then no machine 
tools giving the perfection of workmanship required. 

Their advantages are that their motion is rotary and 
not reciprocal. They can develop speed of from 5000 
to 30,000 revolutions per minute, while the highest 
ever attained by a reciprocating engine is not over 
1000. Their thermodynamic losses are less, hence they 
consume less steam and less fuel. 

It is a very interesting fact that the basic invention 
upon which not only steam turbines and electric dy- 
namos, but, indeed, all other parts of mechanical engi- 
neering, depend, is of such remote antiquity that we know 
nothing of its origin. This is the wheel which Glad- 
stone said was the greatest of man's mechanical inven- 
tions, as there is nothing in nature to suggest it. 

Duplication of parts has lowered the cost of all products. 
Clothing is one of these. The parts of ready-made gar- 
ments and shoes are now cut into shape in numbers at 
a time, by sharp-edged templates, and then fastened 
together by sewing-machines. 

Mechanical engineering is a good example of the 
survival of the fittest. Millions of dollars are expended 
on machinery, when suddenly a new discovery or inven- 
tion casts them all into the scrap heap, to be replaced 
by those of greater earning capacity. 

Prime motors derive their energy either from coal 
or other combinations of carbon, such as petroleum, or 
from gravity. This may come from falling water, and 
the old-fashioned water-wheels of the eighteenth century 
were superseded in the nineteenth by turbines, first in- 
vented in France and since greatly perfected. These 
are used in the electrical transmission of water-power at 
Niagara of 5000 horse-power, and form a very important 
part of the plant. 

The other gravity motors are wind-mills and wave- 
motors. Wind-mills are an old invention, but have 

442 



ENGINEERING 

been greatly improved in the United States by the use 
of the self-reefing wheel. The great plains of the West 
are subject to sudden, violent gales of wind, and unless 
the wheel was automatically self-reefing it would often 
be destroyed. Little has been written about these wheels, 
but their use is very widely extended, and they perform 
a most useful function in industrial engineering. 

There have been vast numbers of patents taken out 
for wave-motors. One was invented in Chili, South 
America, which furnished a constant power for four 
months, and was utilized in sawing planks. The action 
of waves is more constant on the Pacific coast of America 
than elsewhere, and some auxiliary power, such as a 
gasoline engine, which can be quickly started and stop- 
ped, must be provided for use during calm days. The 
prime cost of such a machine need not exceed that of a 
steam plant, and the cost of operating is much less than 
that of any fuel-burning engine. The saving of coal 
is a very important problem. In a wider sense, we may 
say that the saving of all the great stores which nature 
has laid up for us during the past, and which have re- 
mained almost untouched until the nineteenth century, 
is the great problem of to-day. 

Petroleum and natural gas may disappear. The 
ores of gold, silver, and platinum will not last forever. 
Trees will grow, and iron ores seem to be practically 
inexhaustible. Chemistry has added a new metal in 
aluminum, which replaces copper for many purposes. 
One of the greatest problems of the twentieth century 
is to discover some chemical process for treating iron, 
by which oxidation will not take place. 

Coal, next to grain, is the most important of nature's 
gifts ; it can be exhausted, or the cost of mining it become 
so great that it cannot be obtained in the countries where 
it is most needed; water, wind, and wave power may 
take its place to a limited extent, and greater use may 

443 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

be made of the waste gases coming from blast or smelter 
furnaces, but as nearly all energy comes from coal, 
its use must be economized, and the greatest economy 
will come from pulverizing coal and using it in the shape 
of a fine powder. Inventions have been made trying 
to deliver this powder into the fire-box as fast as made, 
for it is as explosive as gunpowder, and as dangerous 
to store or handle. If this can be done, there will be a 
saving of coal due to perfect and smokeless combustion, 
as the admission of air can be entirely regulated, the 
same blast which throws in the powder f urnishing oxygen. 
Some investigators have estimated that the saving of 
coal will be as great as twenty per cent. This means 
100,000,000 tons of coal annually. 

Bituminous coal will then be as smokeless as anthracite, 
and can be burned in locomotives. Cities will be free 
from the nuisance of wasted coal, which we call soot. 
This process will be the best kind of mechanical stoking, 
and will prevent the necessity of opening the doors of 
fire-boxes. The boiler-rooms of steamships will no 
longer be " floating hells," and the firing of large locomo- 
tives will become easy. 

Another problem of mechanical engineering is to 
determine whether it will be found more economical to 
transform the energy of coal, at the mines, into electric 
current and send it by wire to cities and other places 
where it is wanted, or to carry the coal by rail and water, 
as we now do, to such places, and convert it there by the 
steam or gas engine. 

In favor of the first method it can be said that hills 
of refuse coal now representing locked-up capital can 
be burned, and the cost of transportation and handling 
be saved. Electric energy can now transport power 
in high voltage economically between coal-mines and 
most large cities. 

The second method has the advantage of not depending 

444 



ENGINEERING 

on one single source of supply, that may break down, 
but in having the energy stored in coal -pockets near 
by the place of use, where it can be applied to separate 
units of power with no fear of failure. 

It seems probable that a combination of the two sys- 
tems will produce the best results. Where power can be 
sent electrically from the mines for less cost than the 
coal can be transported, that method will be used. 

To prevent stoppage of works, the separate motors 
and a store of coal, to be used in cases of emergency, 
will still be needed, just as has been described as neces- 
sary to the commercial success of wave-motors. 

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING 

Any attempt by the writer of this article to trace the 
progress of electricity would be but a vain repetition, 
after the admirable manner in which the subject has 
been treated in a former paper of this series by Pro- 
fessor Elihu Thomson. 

We can only once more emphasize the fact that it is 
by the union of four separate classes of minds — scientific 
discoverers, inventors, engineers, and capitalists — that 
this vast new industry has been created, which gives 
direct employment to thousands, and, as Bacon said 
300 years ago, has " endowed the human race with new 
powers." 

METALLURGY AND MINING 

All the processes of metallurgy and mining employ 
statical, hydraulic, mechanical, and electrical engineer- 
ing. Coal, without railways and canals, would be of 
little use, unless electrical engineering came to its aid. 

It was estimated by the late Lord Armstrong that of 
the 450,000,000 to 500,000,000 tons of coal annually pro- 
duced .in the world, one-third is used for steam produc- 

445 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

tion, one -third in metallurgical processes, and one- 
third for domestic consumption. This last item seems 
large. It is the most important manufacturing industry 
in the world, as may be seen by comparing the coalless 
condition of the eighteenth century with the coal-using 
condition of the nineteenth century. 

Next in importance comes the production of iron and 
steel. Steel, on account of its great cost and brittleness, 
was only used for tools and special purposes until past 
the middle of the last century. This has been all changed 
by the invention of his steel by Bessemer in 1864, and 
open-hearth steel in the furnace of Siemens, perfected 
some twenty years since by Gilchrist & Thomas. 

The United States have taken the lead in steel manu- 
facture. In 1873 Great Britain made three times as 
much steel as the United States. Now the United States 
makes twice as much as Great Britain, or forty per cent, 
of all the steel made in the world. 

Mr. Carnegie has explained the reason why, in epi- 
grammatic phrase: "Three pounds of steel billets can 
be sold for two cents." 

This stimulates rail and water traffic and other in- 
dustries, as he tells us one pound of steel requires two 
pounds of ore, one and one-third pounds of coal, and one- 
third of a pound of limestone. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that the States bordering 
on the lakes have created a traffic of 25,000,000 tons 
yearly through the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, while the 
Suez, which supplies the wants of half the population of 
the world, has only 7,000,000, or less than the tonnage 
of the little Harlem River at New York. 

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING 

This leads us to our last topic, for which too little room 
has been left. Industrial engineering covers statical, 

446 



ENGINEERING 

hydraulic, mechanical, and electrical engineering, and 
adds a new branch which we may call chemical engineer- 
ing. This is pre-eminently a child of the nineteenth 
century, and is the conversion of one thing into another 
by a knowledge of their chemical constituents. 

When Dalton first applied mathematics to chemistry 
and made it quantitative, he gave the key which led to 
the discoveries of Cavendish, Gay-Lussac, Berzelius, 
Liebig, and others. This new knowledge was not locked 
up, but at once given to the world, and made use of. Its 
first application on a large scale was made by Napoleon 
in encouraging the manufacture of sugar from beets. 

The new products were generally made from what 
were called "waste material." We now have the manu- 
facture of soda, bleaching powders, aniline dyes, and 
other products of the distillation of coal, also coal-oil 
from petroleum (known fifty or sixty years ago only as a 
horse medicine), acetylene gas, celluloid, rubber goods 
in all their numerous varieties, high explosives, cement, 
artificial manures, artificial ice, beet -sugar, and even 
beer may now be included. 

Through many ages, the alchemists, groping in the 
dark, and in ignorance of nature's laws, wasted their 
time in trying to find what they called the philosopher's 
stone, which they hoped would transform the baser 
metals into gold. 

If such a thing could be found it would be a curse, as 
it would take away one of the most useful instruments 
we have — a fixed standard of value. 

In a little over one hundred years, those working by 
the light of science have found the true philosopher's 
stone in modern chemistry. The value of only a part of 
these new products exceeds the nominal value of all the 
gold in the world. 

The value of our mechanical and chemical products is 
great, but it is surpassed by that of food products. If 

447 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

these did not keep pace with the increase of population, 
the theories of Malthus would be true — but he never saw 
a modern reaper. 

The steam -plough was invented in England some 
fifty years since, but the great use of agricultural ma- 
chinery dates from our Civil War, when so many men 
were taken from agriculture. It became necessary to 
fill their places with machinery. Without tracing the 
steps which have led to it, we may say that the common 
type is what is called "the binder," and is a machine 
drawn chiefly by animals, and in some cases by a field 
locomotive. 

It cuts, rakes, and binds sheaves of grain at one op- 
eration. Sometimes threshing and winnowing ma- 
chines are combined with it, and the grain is delivered 
into bags ready for the market. 

Different machines are used for cutting and binding 
corn, and for mowing and raking hay, but the most im- 
portant of all is the grain-binder. The extent of their 
use may be known from the fact that 75,000 tons of 
twine are used by these machines annually. 

It is estimated that there are in the United States 
1,500,000 of these machines, but as the harvest is 
earlier in the South, there are probably not over 1,000,- 
000 in use at one time. As each machine takes the 
place of sixteen men, this means that 16,000,000 men 
are released from fanning for other pursuits. 

The "man with the hoe" has disappeared from the 
real world, and is only to be found in the dreams of poets. 

It is fair to assume that a large part of these 16,- 
000,000 men have gone into manufacturing, the 
operating of railways, and other pursuits. The use 
of agricultural machinery, therefore, is one explanation 
of why the United States produces eight-tenths of the 
world's cotton and corn, one-quarter of its wheat, one- 
third of its meat and iron, two-fifths of its steel, and one- 

448 



ENGINEERING 

third of its coal, and a large part of the world's manu- 
factured goods. 

CONCLUSION 

It is a very interesting question, why was this great 
development of material prosperity delayed so late? 
Why did it wait until the nineteenth century, and then 
all at once increase with such rapid strides ? 

It was not until modern times that the reign of law 
was greatly extended, and men were insured the prod- 
uct of their labors. 

Then came the union of scientists, inventors, and 
engineers. 

So long as these three classes worked separately but 
little was done. There was an antagonism between 
them. Ancient writers went so far as to say that the 
invention of the arch and of the potter's wheel were be- 
neath the dignity of a philosopher. 

One of the first great men to take a different view was 
Francis Bacon. Macaulay, in his famous essay, quotes 
him as saying : " Philosophy is the relief of man's estate, 
and the endowment of the human race with new powers ; 
increasing their pleasures and mitigating their suffer- 
ings." These noble words seem to anticipate the famous 
definition of civil engineering, embodied by Telford 
in the charter of the British Institution of Civil Engi- 
neers : " Engineering is the ail of controlling the great 
powers of nature for the use and convenience of man." 

The seed sown by Bacon was long in producing fruit. 
Until the laws of nature were better known, there could 
be no practical application of them. Towards the end 
of the eighteenth century a great intellectual revival 
took place. In literature appeared Voltaire, Rousseau, 
Kant, Hume, and Goethe. In pure science there came 
Laplace, Cavendish, Lavoisier, Linnaeus, Berzelius, 
Priestley, Count Rumford, James Watt, and Dr. Frank- 
2F 449 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

lin. The last three were among the earliest to bring 
about a union of pure and applied science. Franklin 
immediately applied his discovery that frictional elec- 
tricity and lightning were the same to the protection 
of buildings by lightning-rods. Count Rumford (whose 
experiments on the conversion of power into heat led 
to the discovery of the conservatism of energy) spent a 
long life in contriving useful inventions. 

James Watt, one of the few men who have united in 
themselves knowledge of abstract science, great inven- 
tive faculties, and rare mechanical skill, changed the 
steam-engine from a worthless rattletrap into the most 
useful machine ever invented by man. To do this he 
first discovered the science of thermodynamics, then 
invented the necessary appliances, and finally con- 
structed them with his own hands. He was a very ex- 
ceptional man. At the beginning of the nineteenth 
century there were few engineers who had received any 
scientific education. Most of them worked by their 
constructive instincts, like beavers, or from experience 
only. It took a lifetime to educate such an engineer, 
and few became eminent until they were old men. 

Now there is in the profession a great army of young 
men, most of them graduates of technical schools, good 
mathematicians, and well versed in the art of experi- 
menting. The experiments of undergraduates on cem- 
ents, concrete, the flow of water, the impact of metals, 
and the steam-engine, have added much to the general 
stock of knowledge. 

One of the present causes of progress is that all dis- 
coveries are published at once in technical journals and 
in the daily press. The publication of descriptive in- 
dexes of all scientific and engineering articles as fast 
as they appear is another modern contrivance. 

Formerly scientific discoveries were concealed by 
cryptograms, printed in a dead language, and hidden in 

450 



ENGINEERING 

the archives of learned societies. Even so late as 1 821 
Oersted published his discovery of the uniformity of 
electricity and magnetism in Latin. 

Engineering works could have been designed and 
useful inventions made, but they could not have been 
carried out without combination. Corporate organiza-, 
tion collects the small savings of many into great sums 
through savings-banks, life insurance companies, etc., 
and uses this concentrated capital to construct the vast 
works of our days. This could not continue unless 
fair dividends were paid. Everything now has to be 
designed so as to pay. Time, labor, and material must 
be saved, and he ranks highest who can best do this. 
Invention has been encouraged by liberal patent laws, 
which secure to the inventor property in his ideas at a 
moderate cost. 

Combination, organization, and scientific discovery, 
inventive ability, and engineering skill are now united. 

It may be said that we have gathered together all 
the inventions of the nineteenth century and called 
them works of engineering. This is not so. Engineer- 
ing covers much more than invention. It includes all 
works of sufficient size and intricacy to require men 
trained in the knowledge of the physical conditions 
which govern the mechanical application of the laws 
of nature. First comes scientific discovery, then in- 
vention, and lastly engineering. Faraday and Henry 
discovered the electrical laws which led to the invention 
of the dynamo, which was perfected by many minds. 
Engineering built such works as those at Niagara Falls 
to make it useful. 

An ignorant man may invent a safety-pin, but he 
cannot build the Brooklyn Bridge. 

The engineer-in-chief commands an army of experts, 
as without specialization little can be done. His is the 
comprehensive design, for which he alone is responsible. 

451 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Such is the evolution of engineering, which began 
as a craft and has ended as a profession. 

In past times, civilization depended upon military 
engineering. Warriors at first used only the weapons 
of the hand. Then came military engineering, applied 
both to attack and defence, and culminating in the in- 
vention of gunpowder. The civilization of to-da3? de- 
pends greatly upon civil engineering, as we have tried 
to show. It has changed the face of the world and 
brought all men nearer together. It has improved 
the condition of man by sanitary appliances and lower- 
ing the cost of food. It has shown that through machin- 
ery the workman is better educated, and his wages are 
increased, while the profits of capital increase also. 
It has made representative government possible over 
vast areas of territory, and is democratizing the world. 

Thoughtful persons have asked, will this new civiliza- 
tion last, or will it go the way of its predecessors ? Surely 
the answer is : all depends on good government, on the 
stability of law, order, and justice, protecting the rights 
of all classes. It will continue to grow with the growth 
of good government, prosper with its prosperity, and 
perish with its decay. 

Thomas C. Clarke. 



RELIGION 



CATHOLICISM 



TT is no unnatural curiosity that tempts us to recollect 
* ourselves at the end of a century and consider the 
gainsand losses of three generations, our inheritance from 
the past, our own administration of the same, and the 
prospects of our descendants. Religion can only gain 
from such a survey, for she is a world teacher on so large 
a scale that all ordinary human methods of compari- 
son and summary are too dwarfed and insufficient for 
her. Her message is to all humanity; hence only the 
most universal criteria are rightly applicable to her. 
It seems to me that that is especially true of the oldest 
historical form of Christianity, which is Roman Ca- 
tholicism. 

The Roman Church has had a message for all human- 
ity in every age ever since Saint Clement penned his fam- 
ous epistle to the Corinthians, or Saint Victor caused the 
Christian world to meet in special councils for the solu- 
tion of a universal difficulty. It is no mere coincidence 
that, at the opening of the last century of this mystical 
and wonderful cycle of two thousand years, the Bishop 
of Rome should again address the world in tones whose 
moderation and sympathy recall the temper and the 
arguments of Saint Clement, his far-away predecessor 
and disciple of Saint Peter. 

The year 1800 was a very disheartening one for Ca- 
tholicism. It still stood erect and hopeful, but in the 
midst of a political and social wreckage, the result of 

455 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

a century of scepticism and destructive criticism that 
acted at last as sparks for an ungovernable popular 
frenzy, during which the old order appeared to pass away 
forever and a new one was inaugurated with every man- 
ifestation of joy. The tree of political liberty was every- 
where planted, and the peoples of Europe promised them- 
selves a life of unalloyed comfort for all future time. 
Catholicism was the religion of the majority of these 
people, and was cunningly obliged to bear the brunt of 
all their complaints, justified and unjustifiable; although 
the authorities of Catholicism had long protested against 
many of the gravest abuses of the period, sustained in 
formal defiance of the principles and institutions of the 
Catholic religion. The new Csesar threatened to be more 
terrible to the independence of religion than any ancient 
one, and the revenues and establishments by which 
Catholicism had kept up its public standing and earned 
the esteem and gratitude of the people were swept away 
or quasi ruined. 

All the acquired charges and duties of the past were 
left to the Catholic religion; yet the means to carry 
them on were taken away, sometimes by open violence, 
sometimes by insidious measures, but always by gross 
injustice. The final incidence of this injustice was on 
the common people, since the Church was, after all, only 
the administrator of very much that she was thus dis- 
possessed of. 

With this overturning of all the conditions of Cath- 
olic life came new problems, new trials, and a period 
of indefinite, uncertain circumstances that were finally 
set at rest only at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, by 
which an end was put to the political changes that began 
with the Revolution of 1789. 

The modus vivendi then reached, and soon consecrated 
by a series of concordats, has remained substantially 
the basis of the dealings of Catholicism with the gov- 

456 



RELIGION 

ernments of the Old World. Onfy one formal and per- 
manent violation of this legal situation has taken place, 
the violent and unjust dispossession of the Holy See by 
the government of the House of Savoy, in flagrant vio- 
lation of every title that could be invoked by a legiti- 
mate civil power. Elsewhere Catholicism has under- 
gone much suffering, both in the states of the Old 
World and in the republics of South America. But, 
the above vital conflict apart, the old century closed 
with no very acute or intolerable condition of things, 
although there is much that does not reply to our 
ideas of fairness and justice. 

THE VATICAN COUNCIL 

The chief event of the century, from the point of view 
of Roman Catholicism, is undoubtedly the holding of 
the Vatican Council. Since the Council of Trent the 
bishops of the Catholic world had not met in common 
under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome. The gravest 
interests of religion seemed at stake after more than a 
century of public infidelity and the overthrow of all for- 
mer safeguards of faith. The character of doctrinal 
authority and its visible tangible possessor were declared 
by the dogma of Papal infallibility. The genuine re- 
lations of reason and revelation were set forth in un- 
mistakable language. 

The troubles that followed the close of the Council in 
some parts of Europe were neither serious nor long- 
lived, since its teachings were in keeping with the gen- 
eral sense of Catholicism. It promoted, notably, mutual 
respect and concord among the bishops and gave to the 
multitudes of Catholics in the Old and New Worlds 
a new sign of the unity and internal vigor of the 
Church. The scenes of the Council are indelibly fixed 
in my memory, for I was the youngest and humblest 

457 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

of the six hundred and sixty-seven bishops who com- 
posed it. 

A General Council is the very highest act of the life of 
the Church, since it presents within a small compass, and 
at once, all the movements that have been developing in 
the course of centuries, and offers to all the faithful and 
to all outside the Church straightforward answers to all 
the great ecclesiastical problems that come up for settle- 
ment. Had the Vatican Council been finished it would 
have taken up the grave subject of ecclesiastical dis- 
cipline. That is reserved for the reopening of the Coun- 
cil at some future date. 

THE MISSIONS OF CATHOLICISM 

It is incumbent on the Catholic Church to spread the 
teachings of Jesus Christ, and this by His own divine 
command: "Going, therefore, teach all nations." 

In this last century she has not been unfaithful, any 
more than in others. No portion of the vineyard has been 
neglected; the martyr's blood has watered some parts 
more abundantly, but in all the missionary has toiled 
without ceasing, has spent himself. In the Far East 
Catholic missions have been carried on in India, China, 
Thibet, Tonkin. In every part of Africa, northern, 
central, and southern, the priests and nuns of the 
Catholic Church have preceded the explorer or fol- 
lowed the trader and the miner with the blessings 
of religion. In the still pagan parts of North and 
South America her missionaries are found all through 
the century. They have kept up their vigils in the 
Holy Land, and in general have made a notable prog- 
ress. 

The inventions of the age have been beneficial by 
opening up new lands and by making transit easy and 
rapid, thus recalling some of the conditions which con- 

458 



RELIGION 

duced to the original spread of the religion of Jesus. 
A multitude of noble souls have devoted all to the en- 
lightenment of the barbarian and pagan world. And 
while I disparage no land, and do not undervalue the 
good intentions and efforts of those outside our pale, 
I cannot pass over in silence the French nation, which 
has given more abundantly than any, perhaps more 
abundantly than all others, of priests, sisters, and funds 
for the essential duty of Catholicism. The work of the 
Propagation of the Faith and the Seminary of Foreign 
Missions at Paris deserve a special souvenir as often as 
Catholic missions are mentioned. 

THE POPES OF THE CENTURY 

Six Popes ruled the Church in the nineteenth century : 
Pius VII., Leo XII., Pius VIII., Gregory XVI., Pius IX., 
and the present venerable pontiff, Leo XIII. In the per- 
son of Pius VII. they have known what martyrdom was 
like, also the shame and humiliation of being subject to 
a civil power absolute in its character and prone to un- 
warrantable interference with the ecclesiastical power, 
even to contempt of its most ancient and venerable rights. 
In Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. they learned the purposes 
and the power of those who in Europe have succeeded 
to the men of the French Revolution. In Leo XIII. 
their line, the oldest line of rulers on the earth, can boast 
of a most enlightened mind and a very sympathetic 
heart. Long time a bishop of an important see before 
he was made Pope, he has been at the level of every task 
imposed upon the Papacy. 

In a particular manner he has been the patron of eccle- 
siastical studies, by his scholarly encyclicals on philos- 
ophy, Scripture, history, and other branches of learning. 
A noble specimen of this activity is his late letter to the 
bishops of France on the studies of the clergy. His 

459 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

spirit is the Christian spirit of reconciliation and con- 
cord, yet without sacrifice of the immemorial rights and 
the solemn obligations of the Apostolic See. He may 
not live to see the restoration of his independence, and 
the reparation of the wrong inflicted upon the Holy See, 
but he can maintain a protest that will forever invalidate 
among Catholics the claim of the actual government 
and keep open the Roman question until it is rightly 
settled. 

Catholics cannot forget that the Pope for the time 
being is, according to Catholic doctrine, the successor 
of Saint Peter in all his rights and privileges as the 
visible head of the Church, appointed by Jesus Himself. 
Hence, among other duties, he has to safeguard the 
approved traditions and the general legislation of the 
past, to protect the status of the Church as given over 
to him, and to hand it down undiminished to his own 
successor. Precisely because he is the head of the Church 
he may not licitly alter its organic and regular life, or 
arbitrarily abandon the almost sacrosanct ways along 
which his predecessors have moved, or give up lightly 
the institutions in which religion has gradually found 
a setting for itself. 

I venture to say that this element of fixity in the 
attitude of the Apostolic See will be more appreciated 
in another age, more constructive and architectonic 
than the past, less querulous and destructive, even if 
less daring and brilliant. Forever to pull down and 
scatter, and never to build up and perfect, cannot be 
the final purpose of human society. It is perhaps 
worth remarking that the average reign of the Popes 
was much longer in the nineteenth century than in 
any other, being over sixteen years, and that two 
successive reigns, those of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., 
represent fifty-four continuous years of Church gov- 
ernment at Rome, a phenomenon not witnessed since 

460 



RELIGION 

the foundation of that Church by Saint Peter and Saint 
Paul. 

THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY 

During this century the Holy Father has been able to 
restore the Catholic hierarchy in England, Scotland, 
Holland, and to create it anew in India. This means the 
orderly management of the works and the purposes of 
the Catholic religion, since the episcopate is the di- 
vinely instituted organ for its spread and its administra- 
tion. In many lands a numerous episcopate has sprung 
up. In our own beloved country it has grown almost at 
the rate of one see for every year of the century. The 
apostolic activity of the episcopate has been usually 
beyond reproach. The care of souls, the creation of 
parishes, building of churches, convents, schools, and 
charitable institutions has gone on in every diocese of 
the Catholic world. Some bishops have distinguished 
themselves by their sanctity of life and their love for 
the poor; others by their learning and their skill in 
their writing works of utility for the faithful; others 
by their holy martyrdoms, both in pagan and Chris- 
tian lands; others by devotion to great works of com- 
mon charity and utility — nearly all by their exem- 
plary lives and the conscientious performance of their 
duties. 

No nation has a monopoly of this outpouring of the 
highest sacerdotal devotion ; and no nation or people, 
as far as I can learn, has been without a steady suc- 
cession of remarkable bishops, men who would have 
done honor to any age of Christian history. I believe 
that it is the constant and edifying service of the episco- 
pal body which is chiefly responsible for the improvement 
in learning, morality, and laborious enlightened zeal on 
the part of the clergy, diocesan and monastic, which it 
seems just to claim for the nineteenth centurjr. In some 

461 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

lands the episcopal office is freer than in others, and its 
beneficent activity is more immediate and visible. In 
all the bishops have kept the bond of unity, often at no 
inconsiderable sacrifice of personal comfort. Neither 
schism nor heresy of any formal and noteworthy nature 
has been connected with the episcopal office. It would 
ill become me to discriminate where the merits are so 
equal. I may, however, be permitted to rejoice with my 
countrymen at the end of the century that the life and 
the teachings of a Carroll, a Cheverus, a Brute, a Neu- 
mann, a Dubois, have not been without salutary effect, 
and have set a shining mark for the imitation of all com- 
ing generations. Particularly have such men incul- 
cated habitual courtesy and charity in dealing with all 
those who did not share the faith of Catholics. They 
were fresh from the storms of foreign religious hatred 
and infidel intolerance, and knew by personal experience 
the benefit of mutual good understanding and personal 
respect. 

In the United States, particularly, the Catholic episco- 
pate has been very active in providing for the most fun- 
damental spiritual needs of their flocks — churches for 
religious services, priests for the administration of sacra- 
ments, schools for the preservation of the revealed Chris- 
tian faith, orphanages for the little waifs and castaways 
of society. Whether short or long, the periods of gov- 
ernment of these Church rulers have never been idle nor 
marked by self-indulgence. Almost every one has left 
some monument of faith as a contribution to the general 
good of Catholicism. I would neither exaggerate nor 
boast, yet it occurs to me, after many years of service, 
travel, and observation, that few ages of Christianity 
can show a more laborious and elevated episcopate than 
the nineteenth century. 

The recruiting of the diocesan clergy has been the 
gravest duty of this episcopate, for religion lives by and 

462 



RELIGION 

for men. It can get along without wealth or monuments, 
but not without intelligent teachers of its tenets and 
faithful observers of its precepts. In keeping with the de- 
crees of the Council of Trent diocesan seminaries have 
been opened where it was possible, and elsewhere pro- 
vincial institutions of a similar character. Both nourish 
in the United States, and grow more numerous with 
every decade. The older clergy, long drawn from the 
venerable schools of Europe, have left a sweet odor 
among us, the purest odor of self-sacrificing lives, of 
devotion to poor and scattered flocks, of patient, un- 
complaining contentment with the circumstances of 
poverty and humility. There is no diocese in the United 
States where there cannot be heard tales of the hard- 
ships and brave lives of the ecclesiastics who laid the 
foundations of religion. We remember them always, 
and hold their names in benediction. The younger 
generation of our clergy enjoys advantages denied to 
their predecessors; but we consider that they owe it to 
those predecessors if they have a degree of leisure to per- 
fect the culture of their minds, and a faithful Catholic 
people to ask for the benefits which must accrue from 
greater learning, if it be solid and well directed. 

Yet I cannot admit that our older clergy were deficient 
in the learning of the schools. The names of England 
and Corcoran are at once on our lips, not to speak of a long 
array of others almost equally entitled to distinguished 
mention. If the external conditions of the diocesan 
clergy have improved, their relations to the Church au- 
thority have been safeguarded with even greater earnest- 
ness and efficiency. The dispositions of synods, pro- 
vincial councils, and the three plenary councils of Bal- 
timore have, we are happy to say, had little to do with 
questions of doctrine. They have all been held for the 
improvement of discipline and notably for the welfare 
of the clergy. In the same direction, also, have tended 

463 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the numerous decisions and instructions from the Ro- 
man congregations, whose wisdom has never been in- 
voked by us in vain, and whose sympathy for our con- 
ditions we gratefully acknowledge. 

THE CONGREGATION OF THE PROPAGANDA 

Any account of the good influence of the Holy See on 
our ecclesiastical conditions would be unjust and in- 
complete if the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide 
were omitted. To it we owe an unceasing surveillance, 
full of prudence and intelligence. From its offices have 
come to the bishops regularly counsel, warning, en- 
couragement, co-operation. It has been eminently just 
and fair, also fearless in the application of the principles, 
the spirit, and the letter of canonical discipline. Its 
action is a calm and grave one, marked by reticence and 
patience and that composure which belongs to the high- 
est judicial decisions. But the Catholic Church in the 
United States and in Canada owes it an undisputed 
debt of gratitude. The most learned cardinals of the 
century and the best ecclesiastical talent have co-oper- 
ated in the creation of its legislation, which need not 
fear the criticism of any learned and honest judicial 
body of men. 

RELIGIOUS ORDERS AND COMMUNITIES 

In the religious orders and communities the Catholic 
Church possesses a very ancient auxiliary force that 
has rendered incalculable help during the century. By 
their numbers, their strong inherited traditions, their 
central government, their willing obedience, and their 
other resources they have come everywhere to the aid of 
the bishops and the diocesan clergy. Often they bore 
alone and for a long time, and at great sacrifices, the 

464 



RELIGION 

whole burden of religion. Their praise is rightly on all 
sides, and their works speak for them, when their mod- 
esty and humility forbid them to praise themselves. 
The missions of Catholicism in this century, as in others, 
have largely fallen to them. They stood in the breach 
for the cause of education when the churches were too 
poor and few to open colleges. They have given count- 
less missions and retreats, and in general have not spared 
themselves when called upon for works of general utility. 
They and their works are of the essence of Catholicism, 
and they ought rightly to flourish in any land where 
they are free to live according to the precepts and the 
spirit of their founders, who are often canonized saints 
of the Catholic Church. 

I shall not be saying too much when I assert that 
among the invaluable services rendered to the Church 
by Catholic women of all conditions of life — no unique 
thing in the history of Catholicism — those rendered by 
the women of religious communities are of the first rank 
of merit. Primary Catholic education, in the United 
States, at least, would have been almost impossible 
without their devotion. It is owing to them that the 
orphans have been collected and cared for, the sick housed 
and sheltered, the poor and helpless and aged, the crip- 
pled and the blind, looked after regularly and lovingly. 
They surely walk in the footsteps of Jesus, doing good 
wherever they go. The perennial note of sanctity in 
the Catholic Church shines especially in them. Con- 
tent with food and clothing and shelter, they devote 
their lives, often in the very flower of youth and health 
and beauty, to the weak and needful members of Chris- 
tian society. He must needs be a Divine Master who 
can so steadily charm into His service the purest and 
the most affectionate of hearts, and cause them to put 
aside deliberate^ for love of Him even the most justi- 
fiable of human attachments. This argument for Chris- 

465 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

tianity is not new; it was urged by Saint Justin the 
Martyr on the libertine world of the Antonines. 

THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM 

Throughout this century the Roman Church has de- 
sired and sought by all practical means the restoration 
of the former unity of Christendom. Each succeeding 
Pope has appealed to the ancient but separated Churches 
of the Orient, reminding them of the past oneness and 
the need of union with that see which all their records 
proclaim the rock and centre of unity. Similarly, ap- 
peals have been issued to the divided Christian commu- 
nities of the West, as when Pius IX. wrote to the mem- 
bers of the Protestant world before the Vatican Council, 
and when Leo XIII. lately addressed his famous ency- 
clical on the Unity of the Church to all men of good will 
within the Anglican pale. Such efforts may seem per- 
functory; but they have in our eyes a deep meaning. 
They proclaim the doctrine of unity that is clearer than 
the noonday sun from the teachings of Jesus; they 
make a first step in the direction of its restoration ; they 
keep alive the spirit of charity in many hearts, and they 
stir up countless prayers for the consummation of an 
end that few believing Christians any longer consider 
unnecessary. Already the canker-worms of doubt and 
indifference are gnawing at those last foundations of 
the old inherited Christian religious beliefs that still 
worked beneficently outside the pale of Catholic unity, 
but are now disappearing from the public consciousness 
because, too often, they are no longer elements of private 
conviction. In the realm of faith, as in that of nature, 
there is an after-glow, when the central sun has spent 
its force ; but in both that glow is the herald of coldness 
and darkness. To those who no longer allow in their 
hearts any Christian belief, Catholicism has strongly 

466 



RELIGION 

appealed in the nineteenth century by its teachings on 
the right use of reason in matters of faith, the claims 
of religion on the mind and the heart of man, the 
benefits of Christianity, and its superiority over all 
other forms of religion — in a word, by the constant 
expose of all the motives of credibility which could 
affect a sane and right mind that had divested itself 
of prejudice and passion. 

CONVERSIONS TO CATHOLICISM 

Not the least remarkable share of the history of Ca- 
tholicism is seen in the stream of conversions that began 
in the very stress of the French Revolution and has not 
ceased to flow since then. From every land of the Old 
and New Worlds hundreds of thousands have returned 
of their own volition to the ancient fold wherein we firmly 
believe is kept the sacred deposit of saving truth. They 
have come to us from the pulpits of opposing religions 
and from the workshops of an unbelieving science. 
Every condition of life, and both sexes, have sent us nu- 
merous souls. Very many of these conversions have 
been unsolicited and unexpected. Some of them meant 
an accession of wealth or social prestige or high rank. 
Others brought with them the beloved tribute of un- 
common intelligence, experience of life and men, ac- 
quired erudition, the highest gifts of style and oratory. 
Very many have come from the middle walks of life, 
and signified no more than a great weariness of pursu- 
ing shadows for the reality of divine truth, and the ex- 
cessive goodness of the Holy Spirit of God which bloweth 
where it listeth. Of this army of converts some have 
been drawn by the conviction that the Bible alone, with- 
out an interpreter and a witness divinely guaranteed, 
could not suffice as a rule of faith. Others have been 
moved by the incarnation in the Church of the spirit 

467 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

and functions of authority without which no society 
can exist. Still others have come back to the Mother 
of all churches, through a deep heart-weariness at the 
endless dilapidation of divine truth outside the Roman 
Church. Some have sought and found through the 
study of history the open door to the truth. Others again 
through the study of art and its functions in the Chris- 
tian Church. In whatever way they returned to the 
unity of the original sheepfold, they are an eloquent 
witness to the innate vigor and the immortal charm of 
the Christian truth as preserved in Catholicism. For 
they have come in unconditionally. Their return has 
worked beneficially, not only for themselves, but for 
those of the Catholic faith, whom it has consoled and 
encouraged for their steadfastness, while the non-Cath- 
olic world cannot but feel that that religion is worthy 
of respect, even of study, which can forever draw so 
many men and women out of the ranks of its adversa- 
ries, even at the sacrifice of many things which are usu- 
ally held dear by society. 

THE RELATIONS WITH CIVIL AUTHORITY 

Being a genuine and world-wide religion, Catholicism 
could not but come into contact with the powers in which 
rests the social authority. 

In many cases the fundamental relations of both have 
been settled by documents of a quasi constitutional 
character known as concordats. They are binding on 
both parties, yet in more than one case the supreme au- 
thority of Catholicism has had reason to complain of 
their violation either in letter or in spirit. 

Important points like the freedom of episcopal elections, 
the management of ecclesiastical revenues, the freedom 
of access to and communication with the Holy See, have 
been tampered with or openlv abolished. In a general 

468 



RELIGION 

way Catholics are far from being content with the actual 
administration of these quasi treaties between the civil 
and the ecclesiastical powers in the Old World and in 
South America — yet they respect them and desire to 
live up to their requirements. It is to be hoped that in 
the new century there will be less suspicion of the truly 
beneficent intentions of the Church, and less hampering 
of the common organs of her existence and work. In a 
century filled with revolutions as no other the Catholic 
Church has comported herself with dignity and equity, 
and managed to find the correct via media in this great 
tangle of opposing and mutually destructive forms and 
theories of government. 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE UNITED STATES 

In our own beloved country we have every reason to 
be thankful that the liberty to worship God according 
to the dictates of conscience is guaranteed by the Con- 
stitution, and has entered deeply into the convictions 
of our fellow-citizens. The Catholic Church, by her own 
constitution, is deeply sympathetic with our national 
life and all that it stands for. She has thrived in the 
atmosphere of liberty, and seeks only the protection of 
the common law, that equal justice which is dealt out 
to all. She is the oldest historical and continuous gov- 
erment on the earth, and it is no small index of the value 
of our institutions and their durability that they make 
provision for the life and the work of so vast and so aged 
a society. It would also seem to show that, through a long 
course of centuries, Catholicism held as its own genuine 
political teachings only such as were finally compatible 
with the most perfect and universal citizenship known 
to history. 

When this nation was forming, the first Catholic 
bishop in the United States, and my first predecessor 

469 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

in the see of Baltimore, John Carroll, accepted and 
performed satisfactorily the gravest public duty of a 
citizen, an embassy to another people for the benefit 
of his own country. Thereby he left to us all an ex- 
ample and a teaching that we shall ever cherish, the 
example of self-sacrifice as the prime duty of every citi- 
zen, and the teaching that patriotism is a holy convic- 
tion to which no Catholic, priest or layman, can hold 
himself foreign or apathetic. 

A Catholic layman of the same distinguished family, 
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, threw in his lot with the 
patriots from the beginning, and by word and deed served 
the cause of American liberty, while he lived to see it 
flourish and inform more and more the minds and hearts 
of the first generation of American citizens. In future 
centuries, as in this, his name will be held in honor 
and benediction as a signer of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. His Catholic belief and conduct will forever 
be a potent encouragement to the children of his own 
faith. He was the first layman to contribute notably 
to the cause of Catholic education, and the native for- 
mation of the priesthood, by the establishment of a col- 
lege for that purpose. 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND EDUCATION 

We have done our best in these ten decades to provide 
the best education for our people and our priests. In- 
timately convinced that general education without re- 
ligion is destined to be an evil rather than a blessing, 
we have created all over the United States a system of 
primary education in parochial schools that has cost us 
and yet costs us the gravest sacrifices and entails the 
heaviest solicitudes. Yet we feel that we are serving 
the cause of God and country by indoctrinating our Cath- 
olic youth with persuasions of the existence of God 

470 



RELIGION 

and His holy attributes, of the true nature of vice and 
virtue, of conscience and sin, of the spiritual and the 
temporal, of the proper purposes of life, of punishment 
and reward in an immortal life. We believe that Chris- 
tianity is better than paganism; also that Christianity 
is something simple, positive, historical, that can and 
ought to be taught from the cradle to the grave, good 
for all conditions, for both sexes, and for every situation 
in life this side of the common grave. Believing this, 
we have shaped our conduct accordingly, and trust to 
God for the issue. In such matters it imports more to 
be right in principle than to be successful. Our second- 
ary system of education has gone on from the founding 
of the Republic. Colleges for boys and academies for 
girls have risen up in every State and Territory, have 
been supported by the faithful people, and are doing an 
incalculable good. As our means increase and other 
advantages offer, we hope to improve them ; Catholicism 
is no stagnant pool, but a field for every good private 
initiative that respects right and truth. In the Catholic 
University of America, founded in the last decade of 
the century by Pope Leo XIII. and the Catholic hierarchy, 
after due and lengthy deliberation, and made possible 
by the magnificent generosity of a Catholic woman, we 
have centred our hopes of a system of higher education 
that shall embody the best traditions of our ancient 
Church and the approved gains of our own times. Amer- 
ican Catholics have not disposed in the past of great 
wealth, inherited or earned ; hence all these works mean 
an incredible devotion and intensity of good will and 
sustained sacrifices. Wherever the Catholic Church has 
been strong and successful, schools of every kind flour- 
ish. I need only recall the fact that the idea, the con- 
stitution, the functions, the influences of a university 
were unknown in the world until she created the type 
in the Middle Ages, and gave over to mankind a new 

471 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

factor in civil and religious life — the power of organized 
learning. 

THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT 

Through the whole century one line of thought and 
action has been gradually disengaging itself from all 
others and dominating them. That is the social move- 
ment, or the tendency towards a more evenly just and 
natural conception of all the relations that arise from 
the common dwelling of mankind in organized society. 
It has long taken the form of institutions and plans for 
the betterment of the conditions of the people, of woman, 
of all who suffer or think they suffer from the actual or- 
ganization of society. If there is something Utopian 
in certain plans or hopes, there is too much that is justi- 
fiable at the root of other attempts to reorganize our so- 
cial conditions. Not to speak of the undesirable in- 
heritances of the past, the new conditions created for the 
common man by the spread of industrialism and com- 
mercialism have often been painful in the extreme, and 
have aroused both violent protests and deep sympathy. 
By the help of God we have abolished the reproach of 
slavery in every civilized land, but we hear from the 
laboring multitudes a vague cry that they are already 
in the throes of a return to that accursed institution. 

Here the doctrines of Catholicism are eminently in 
accord with the right conception of human nature, the 
functions of authority and mutual help or charity, the 
duty to live, and the right to all the necessary means for 
that end. She is sympathetic, historically and natural- 
ly, to the toiling masses, who, after all, form everywhere 
the bulk of her adherents, and have been always the most 
docile and affectionate of her members. It is she who 
created in the world the practical working idea of a com- 
mon humanity, the basis of all genuine social improve- 
ment. The trials of Catholicism have come more often 

472 



RELIGION 

from the luxury and the sin of those in high places than 
from the disaffection of its great masses. As this move- 
ment has gathered force, and passed from theories into 
the domain of action, the Catholic Church, through her 
head, has followed it with attention and respect. The 
whole pontificate of Leo XIII. is remarkable for acts and 
documents which have passed into the history of social 
endeavor in the nineteenth century. His personal 
charities, large and enlightened, are as nothing in com- 
parison with the far-reaching acts like the refusal to con- 
demn the association of the Knights of Labor. His en- 
cyclical on the Condition of Workingmen recalls the 
only possible lines of a final concord between labor and 
capital — the spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ, the best 
Friend our common humanity ever had. In the same 
way, his latest encyclical on Jesus Christ, with which the 
religious history of the century closes, emphasizes the 
true basis for the restoration of peace and harmony and 
justice between the poor and the rich, between the pro- 
ducers of capital and the capital that stimulates and 
regulates production. We may be confident that the 
papacy of the future will not show less enlightenment 
and sympathy in its attempts to solve these delicate and 
grave problems with the least injustice and the greatest 
charity. 

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 

It would be idle to deny or to palliate the many shad- 
ows that fall across the history of Catholicism in the 
century that has elapsed. I scarcely need refer to the 
weaknesses and errors of her individual children : such 
acts she repudiates, and when she can chastises reme- 
dially. But the Church has not recovered that vast 
inherited moral power over the public life which it en- 
joyed before the French Revolution. In many ways 
the consequences of atheism, materialism, and even of 

473 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

deism, have been deduced into manners and institutions, 
to the detriment of the ancient Christian morality. The 
sterner Christian virtue of previous centuries, founded 
on the Christian revelation, has been forced out of the 
public life of whole peoples. Expediency, opportunism, 
moral cowardice have often triumphed over the plain 
right and the fair truth. The principle has been estab- 
lished that God is on the side of the great battalions, is 
ever with the strong men of blood and iron. Ancient 
and venerable sovereignties have been hypocritically 
dispossessed. Small nationalities have been erased 
from the world's political map, and the history of the 
near past almost justifies the rumors of impending steps 
in the same direction. With the increase of greatness in 
states comes an increase of warlike perils, not only from 
commercial rivalry, but from that root of ambition and 
domination which grows in every heart, unless checked 
and subdued in time, and which in the past has been too 
often the source of violent injustice on the greatest scale. 
These deeds and principles we believe to be a necessary 
result of naturalism, of the exclusion of the supernatural 
and revealed elements of Christianity from our public 
life, and not only these, but others of a graver charac- 
ter, that must one day follow from their logical and un- 
checked evolution. Divorce, a cause of ruin in every 
land, grows with rapidity in many civilized nations, so 
much so that not only Catholicism, its inveterate enemy, 
is shocked, but Christian men of every persuasion be- 
lieve that some public and authoritative steps ought to 
be taken to prevent the pollution of the family life, that 
fixed and natural source of public morality. Religion 
has been officially thrust out of the systems of education, 
in every grade, and the young mind taught that it is 
quite a private and unimportant thing. Thus, under 
the plea of indifference, many States have practically 
made themselves the champions of that agnosticism 

474 



RELIGION 

which is the arch-enemy not only of religion, but also 
of patriotism from time immemorial connected with re- 
ligion. The average man soon ceases to make great 
sacrifices, above all to die for the public good, when he 
is satisfied that there is no other life, or that it is not 
worth while living for the uncertainties of approval and 
reward by an eternal God, who is just and true and holy. 

REASONS FOR ENCOURAGEMENT 

On the other hand, the Catholic man or woman knows 
that there are great spiritual forces at work in the world, 
however unhappily its public life may be developing 
from the view-point of Christian morality. There are 
innumerable lives guided by the principles of Christian 
virtue, some of them even culminating in the highest 
sanctity. Though not all such are known to men, yet 
not a few become public examples and incitements to 
virtue. Even outside of the Catholic faith there are not 
a few who regulate their lives by the natural virtues 
and also by inherited Christian virtues that work some- 
times unconsciously, but whose practice can only be 
pleasing to our common Father. Sweet Charity is yet 
a queen in Christian lands ; her services and utility are 
too great to permit her dethronement. Great misfor- 
tunes of any kind still touch the hearts of men that are 
Christian yet when their minds have become clouded 
by indifference to, or dislike of, the supernatural verities. 
Luxury and wealth, greater perhaps than the world has 
yet seen, are still conscious of duties to the common 
weal. Educational institutions of every character and 
philanthropical enterprises of every variety have flour- 
ished on the means thus provided. But from our point 
of view it is better that all such phenomena, to be lasting, 
should have their root and origin in Christian purposes 
and belief. It is yet true, as it was of old on the hill-sides 

475 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

of Judaea : " Except the Lord build the house, they labor 
in vain that build it. Except the Lord keepeththe city, 
he watcheth in vain that keepeth it." (Psalm 126.) 

THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM 

We entertain no doubt that the organization which 
has weathered the storms and stress of so many centu- 
ries will continue to do so in the future. The Catholic 
Church has the promises of her Divine Founder that 
the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. How 
could she doubt of her future? It does not seem likely 
that any vicissitudes can arise which have not their 
counterpart or analogy in the past, so old is she on this 
earth, and so many are the forms of government and 
the kinds of human culture with which she has lived. 
We are confident that she will be equal to all the emer- 
gencies of the future, for while the Church is always 
identical with and present to herself in a conscious way, 
her children and her agents may grow in experience and 
wisdom, as they undoubtedly do, and may bring both of 
these factors to bear upon the future problems of our com- 
mon humanity. Of one thing we may feel certain : she 
will never cease to desire and to work for that efficacious 
unity of all Christendom, which is the permanent wish of 
its Holy Founder, and for which her bishops and priests 
have never ceased to pray in those opening words of the 
Roman Canon of the Mass that we repeat daily : " There- 
fore, Most Clement Father, we suppliantly pray to Thee 
through Jesus Christ Our Lord . . . especially for Thy 
Holy Catholic Church, which mayst Thou vouchsafe to 
pacify, keep, unite, and govern throughout the world." 

James, Card. Gibbons. 



PROTESTANTISM 



'"THE motives which have acted upon religion in the 
*■ nineteenth century, either by way of directly en- 
hancing its power or by restricting its influence, are 
these: (i) Humanitarianism ; (2) The Historical Spirit; 
(3) Science; (4) Nationalism. Although the course of 
religious history has varied somewhat in different coun- 
tries as well as in the different Churches, yet it is possible 
to form an approximate picture of the resultant of these 
forces which will reveal the progress of the Kingdom of 
God in the world. 



The first of these motives — humanitarianism — has 
powerfully influenced the Christian world by asserting 
the rights of man, liberty, equality and the spirit of 
fraternity, the sense of human brotherhood. The germs 
of the humanitarian movement may be traced in the 
eighteenth century, as in the teaching of Lessing and 
Herder and Rousseau; in religious movements like the 
Great Awakening in the United States, the revival in 
England under Wesley and Whitefield, in tentative 
efforts for the abolition of slavery (Hopkins and Clark- 
son), and prison reform (John Howard). But the nine- 
teenth century has been distinguished above all the 
other Christian centuries in the results achieved by 
the sentiment of humanity. It has led to the abolition 
of slavery under English rule, in the United States, and 
in Russia ; to many reform movements of every kind and 

477 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

degree, wherever there existed actual or latent tyranny, 
which robbed humanity of its inherent privileges. 

The humanitarian sentiment is Christian in its origin, 
derived primarily from the conviction of the incarnation 
of God in Christ. Christ appears in history as the leader 
of humanity in the struggle for freedom. Slowly but 
surely ever since His advent, the world of man has been 
moving forward to the attainment of the ideal of human- 
ity revealed in Him. " Ye shall know the truth and the 
truth shall make you free. And if the Son of God shall 
make you free, ye shall be free indeed." The progress 
towards freedom inspired by Him who taught the father- 
hood of God and the brotherhood of men has been ac- 
complished in the face of great hinderances and long 
reverses, overcoming obstacles which would have been 
insuperable without Christian faith. In the nineteenth 
century the movement towards human freedom seems 
almost to have reached its culmination. Within the 
sphere of religion the progress is most manifest in the 
spread of Christian missions, which stand out in any 
review of the century as one of its most extraordinary 
achievements. It might be justly designated as a mis- 
sionary age. So intense and persistent has been its 
devotion to the gospel of Christ as essential for man 
that when the century closed it might be truly said that 
the round world had been girdled with Christian mis- 
sions, whose results are more significant for civilization, 
as well as for religion, than any statistics can reveal. 
The missionary has been the pioneer, it is becoming in- 
creasingly evident, of momentous changes yet to appear. 

The sentiment of humanity has operated as a motive 
in the study of human history, giving to historical in- 
quiry a new interest and impetus. No age has been 
so fruitful in the results of historical research, with 
conclusions of vital importance for every department 
of life, but chiefly this, that an independent place has 

478 



RELIGION 

been vindicated for humanity, as having a life of its 
own distinct from and above the natural order of the 
physical world. The study of man as he appears in 
history has tended to strengthen faith in the essential 
truths of religion, opening up as it has done the deeper 
knowledge of the nature of man to which the religion 
of Christ appeals ; for the modern method of studying 
history, as compared with earlier methods, consists 
in seeking for those inward subjective moods of the 
human soul which lie beneath creeds or institutions, 
and not solely in the accurate description of the objective 
fact. The facts of human life call for interpretation, 
and for this the historian must search. Thus has been 
born what is almost a new department of inquiry — the 
philosophy of history (Hegel and many others). Differ 
as do these attempts at a philosophy of history, they 
yet possess one ruling idea — the conviction of a develop- 
ment in the life of humanity when viewed as a whole. 
The idea of development controlled the higher intellectual 
life of the first half of the century. It was applied with 
important results to the study of ecclesiastical history, 
by Schleiermacher, Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Rothe, Bun- 
sen, and many others, by the Roman Catholic Mohler, 
in his Symbolik, and by John Hen^ 7 Newman, in how- 
ever one-sided and imperfect manner. The doctrine 
of development found its classic formula in the lines 
of Tennyson: 

" Yet, I doubt not through the ages 
One increasing purpose runs. 
And the thoughts of men are widened 
With the process of the suns." 

The influence of the doctrine of development has been 
felt in the study of Scripture, leading to a recognition 
of progressiveness in the divine revelation, whose record 
has been preserved in the Old and New Testaments 

479 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

(Mozley, Ruling Ideas in the Early Ages). By means 
of this truth have been overcome, till they now seem 
unworthy, the objections to the Old Testament on the 
ground that it gave sanction to cruelty, deceit, or an im- 
perfect morality. But the inference has also followed 
that the revelation of God to humanity must be searched 
for in the sacred records, and even by the light of close 
critical scrutiny, if the divine utterance is to be distin- 
guished from crude misapprehensions or misapplica- 
tions. Forms of literary expression, current usages, 
the historical environment of the time — for these al- 
lowance must be made as their influence is recognized. 
The science of biblical criticism has gained from the 
study of general history a larger knowledge of the nature 
of man, which, in turn, has made the study of the Bible 
more profound and thorough, because more real and 
human than were the biblical studies of the eighteenth 
century. The primary question which it has been found 
necessary to ask in regard to any doctrine or institution 
is not whether it is true — for the canons of truth may 
vary with the relative position of the inquirer ; but, rather, 
what does it mean? When the meaning of the record 
is seen, the question of its truth has answered itself. 

The effect of these studies, even of what is called the 
"higher criticism," has not lessened the authority of 
the Bible or changed the character of Christianity as 
" a religion of the book " ; but their tendency has been 
to vindicate the unique and essential place of the Bible 
in literature as containing the veritable record of a divine 
revelation. Some things, indeed, have been changed: 
the order in which the books of the Bible were written 
is not the order in which they stand; some of them are 
of composite authorship, whose various parts were written 
at different times; the traditional chronology, known 
as Ussher's (1656), has been abandoned, nor is there 
anything in the Bible which places it in opposition to 

480 



RELIGION 

the teachings of geology relative to the length of time 
during which man has occupied the earth ; the historical 
order of priest and prophet has been reversed, so that 
the voice of prophecy comes before the decline into ritual 
(Wellhausen and others). Popular misapprehensions 
tend to vanish in the light of a true insight and inter- 
pretation, such as that the first chapter of Genesis was 
intended to be an infallible record of the divine order in 
the creation of the world. That a similar account of 
the creation is found in Babylonian literature only shows 
that the Bible writer was illustrating by the best scientific 
knowledge of the time the vastly higher spiritual truth 
with which the Bible opens, that the creation is the work 
of God, thus leading man to the worship of God and away 
from the lower worships of sun and moon and all the 
hosts of Heaven. 

The mechanical conceptions as to the mode of inspira- 
tion and revelation tend to give way before a larger and 
truer conception of the process by which the revelation 
is made — that God speaks to man actually and authorita- 
tively through the experience of the events of life. Thus 
revelation becomes a living process, and all later history 
may become a commentary on sacred history, renewing 
and confirming the primal utterance of God to the soul 
of man. Much, it is true, yet remains to be done in 
bridging the gulf between the learned and scientific 
interpretation of the sacred record and the popular ap- 
prehension, which, formed in the uncritical moments 
of youth, often persists to mature years and constitutes 
a source of confusion and weakness. A similar situa- 
tion was seen in the Middle Ages in the wide breach 
which existed between the scholastic theologians and 
the popular mind. 

A new department has been added to religious inquiry 
in Comparative Religion, which aims at an impartial 
investigation and free from prejudice, and is also moved 
2H 481 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

by the sentiment of a common humanity to respect all 
utterances of religious feeling in the soul of man. How 
widely the nineteenth century has advanced in this 
respect is seen by recalling a statement of Dr. Johnson : 
"There are two objects of curiosity — the Christian world 
and the Mohammedan world. All the rest may be con- 
sidered as barbarous/' One of the most representative 
monuments of religious scholarship in the last century 
is Professor Max Miiller's Sacred Books of the East. 
Some inquirers in this unfamiliar department have 
worked under the impression that these ancient religions 
were equal in value to the Christian revelation; others 
even have thought them to be in some respects superior. 
And, in general, the first effect of the discovery that there 
was truth in other religions had a tendency to weaken 
the claim of Christianity to be the absolute religion. 
But as the results of the study have been placed in their 
normal perspective, it becomes evident that they only 
confirm the words of St. Paul, that God has at no time 
left Himself without witnesses in the world. Revelation 
also is seen to have been a universal process; and pro- 
found spiritual motives are to be discerned beneath the 
diverse manifestations of the religious instincts. Yet, 
on the whole, the preponderating judgment leads to the 
conclusion that Christianity contains the larger, even 
the absolute, truth; that while it confirms some features 
in these religions as true, it condemns others as false; 
that Christianity also has for one of its essential charac- 
teristics an assimilative power, which not only enables, 
but forces, it to appropriate as its own any aspects of 
truth contained in other religions, which have not hitherto 
been illustrated in the history of the Christian Church. 
Nor is the familiar test applied to religions wholly in- 
defensible which judges them by their historical fruits 
or associations. In accordance with this test, Confu- 
cianism is represented by China, Hinduism by India, 

482 



RELIGION 

Buddhism by Ceylon and Siam, Mohammedanism by 
Turkey, Christianity by Europe and America. 

The influence of the humanitarian sentiment may be 
further traced in softening the asperities of some forms 
of traditional theology, as, for example, the Calvinistic 
doctrine of election with its alternatives of reprobation 
or preterition. These certainly have not been the favorite 
doctrines which have commended themselves to the spirit 
of the age. The effort has been made to bring the doctrine 
of the atonement within the limits of human experience. 
It has been found impossible to present the doctrine of 
endless punishment after the manner of an earlier age. 
Many causes have combined to deepen the sense of 
mystery in which is enveloped the destiny of man, and 
there has been begotten in consequence an unwillingness 
to dogmatize where in earlier times such a reluctance 
was not felt. In this connection may be mentioned two 
religious bodies, which took their rise about the begin- 
ning of the century — Universalism, proclaiming ultimate 
salvation for all men ; and Unitarianism, asserting the 
dignity of man and his divine endowment. But in 
all the Churches alike has the same humanizing force 
been felt, leading to efforts in theological reconstruction 
in order to make it apparent that the primary truths of 
Christianity are not merely arbitrary principles or ar- 
rangements unrelated to life and to the needs of the soul, 
but that in their essential quality there is conformity 
with the larger reason of humanity, with that feeling 
for the inherent worth of things out of which reason 
proceeds, and with which its conclusions must conform. 

II 

Thus far the humanitarian sentiment has been re- 
garded in its combination with Christian faith, and as 
giving new force and distinction to Christian life and 

483 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

thought. But, on the other hand, it must now be noted 
that the same force working apart from the Church, and 
often in opposition to it, has been a limitation to Christian 
progress. In the French Revolution humanitarianism 
was associated with a negative, destructive tendency, 
which overthrew the Church, disowned God and immor- 
tality, and set up in the place of deity a so-called Goddess 
of Reason. This negative tendency has continued to 
exist and has found influential manifestation. It has 
attempted the deification of humanity, as though the 
human race were worthy in itself of being an object of 
worship. It has exalted man at the expense of God, 
conceiving of humanity as alone immortal, as competent 
to steer its own course without supernatural direction. 
It has weakened the sense of nationality, has injured 
and endangered family life, has taken away the highest 
sanctions from morality, and has reduced religion from 
being a revelation from God to a purely subjective process 
in the soul of man, worthy of respect, but without au- 
thority. It has created an abnormal sensitiveness in 
many directions. It has swayed socialistic movements 
aiming at the rights of man and seeking to achieve uni- 
versal happiness, but with an antagonism sometimes 
latent, sometimes expressed, to God and Christ and 
the Christian Church. The prejudice remains which 
had its birth in the French Revolution, that religion is 
a creation of priests for their own selfish ends, and the 
Church an agency for robbing humanity of its rights, 
liberty, equality, and fraternity. 

Principles and convictions like these found utterance 
in the philosophy of Comte (1789 - 1857), who called 
himself the "founder of the religion of humanity," and 
who proposed the scheme of a humanitarian Church, 
limited b}' no national boundaries, whose only deity 
was man, whose ritual found a place only for great men 
who had been the benefactors of the race. Theology 

484 



RELIGION 

and metaphysics were discarded as outgrown methods 
of explaining the phenomena of the universe, and in the 
place they vacated stood the so-called " Positive philoso- 
phy" which rejected all supernatural influence. The 
Church of humanity had, indeed, no history and was a 
failure from its birth. But the combination, first seen 
in Comte, of humanitarianism with the methods and 
principles of natural science, has been the most formid- 
able opponent against which Christianity was ever called 
to struggle. It has been represented in England by 
John Stuart Mill and by Herbert Spencer and many 
others. To the influential writings of this school of 
thinkers is due in great measure the wide-spread, deep- 
seated scepticism since the middle of the century. To 
the same cause, by way of reaction, are owing the spirit- 
ualistic movement, the so-called "Christian Science" 
and other kindred tendencies towards a crude super- 
naturalism. 

Those who entered the controversy in behalf of Chris- 
tianity and against the adherents of the Positive phi- 
losophy suffered at first for the lack of any adequate 
philosophical method on which to rest in the effort to 
overcome this stupendous alliance between a humani- 
tarianism working for the improvement of social condi- 
tions in combination with natural science, whose postu- 
lates involved the denial of the miracle, and indeed of 
all supernatural agency (agnosticism). It seemed for a 
time as though the philosophy of Hegel would serve 
the purpose of a stronghold to which Christian warriors 
might resort while in the stress of a conflict which in- 
volved not only the readjustment of Christian doctrines 
to their new environment, but also the maintenance of 
the idea of God, of the kingdom of God in this world and 
of a future life for the immortal soul. In Germany 
systems of theology were worked out on the basis of 
Hegelian principles, which, as interpreted by orthodox 

485 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

theologians, stood for a principle of surpassing value if 
it could be maintained — that the life of humanity, while 
dependent in the present order on physical conditions, 
was yet above the life in external nature with which the 
natural sciences deal ; that the very definition of humanity 
implies the power of rising to the knowledge of God. 
Nature has no knowledge or consciousness of God, or 
intimation of immortality. It is in bondage to natural 
law and without freedom. The life of humanity must 
not be studied from the point of view of natural science, 
but is seen in the records of human history. The in- 
fluence of Hegel deepened the interest in historical in- 
quiry at a moment when the absorption in the natural 
sciences threatened to gain the ascendency. But the 
Hegelian philosophy, for reasons which it is not possible 
here to render, failed to accomplish the service expected 
from it. It may be that the failure was temporary only, 
and because it was not fully understood. There arose 
a school of thinkers — the Hegelian left wing — who, while 
retaining their interest in history, yet fell under the 
influence of the presuppositions of the natural sciences. 
Thus Strauss, in his Leben Jesu, conceived of the person 
of Christ as a casual product of the human imagination, 
while Feuerbach, in his Essence of Christianity , reach- 
ed the conclusion that religion begins and ends in a sub- 
jective process in the soul. Thus, instead of overcom- 
ing the Positive philosophy, German thought gravitated 
to the same result, with this difference perhaps, that it 
assumed the form of pantheism rather than of atheism. 
In the Tubingen school, led by F. C. Baur, whose con- 
tributions to the study of Church history are yet of 
high value, there was reserve about the miracle, if not 
its tacit denial, and a conception of the Christian Church 
as a product of human origin rather than the purpose 
of Christ. 

But the effect of Strauss was beneficial in that it sent 

486 



RELIGION 

inquirers back to the study of the person of Christ and 
of His age. Never before was attention so concentrated 
upon the life of Jesus, as illustrated in a large number 
of biographical works, too large to be enumerated here. 
As a result of these studies, the conviction grows that 
while there is a local aspect of the person of Christ, so 
that He reflected the peculiar opinions and living in- 
terests of His age, and availed Himself of current beliefs, 
yet He was also infinitely above His time. What He 
was and did and said in Palestine nineteen hundred 
years ago must be supplemented by what He has been 
to the world in subsequent ages, or what He is and is 
doing in the present age. 

While Christian thinkers were struggling with the 
problems raised by the Positive philosophy, the natural 
sciences were commanding in an increasing degree the 
world's attention, until Darwin made his great discovery 
of a law of evolution, when it seemed as though natural 
science had become the arbiter and final tribunal before 
whose judgments the world must bow. Then there 
followed the sharp, even bitter conflict between science 
and theology, when scientific men whose lives had been 
spent in devotion to the study of natural phenomena 
were tempted to write expositions of religious history 
in order to show the fallaciousness of the religious at- 
titude, and theologians, accustomed only to the postulates 
of the spiritual sphere, ventured into the domain of 
science to put a spiritual interpretation on its conclusions 
and discoveries. It was a confusing and painful moment 
when a subtle scepticism pervaded the Churches and 
haunted even the minds of Christian believers. Now 
that the smoke of the battle has cleared away, while 
many tragedies are disclosed, it does not appear that 
the Churches have been weakened by the strife or have 
yielded any essential truth or conviction. The belief 
in God, and in his creation and government of the world, 

487 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the incarnation of God in Christ, the miracle for which 
Christ stands, and pre-eminently the miracle of His res- 
urrection — in a word, the supernatural interpretation 
of life, remains unshaken. It is unjust to charge, as 
has sometimes been done, dishonesty and a spirit of 
evasion against those who, while the fierce battle was 
in progress, kept silence, unable to defend by cogent 
argument what yet they cherished still as true. 

In the latter part of the century there came efforts at 
the reconstruction of theology in order to a better adjust- 
ment of the increase of knowledge regarding the nature 
of God and His relation to the world. The doctrine of 
God as immanent in the world, and not only transcen- 
dent or above and apart from it, has proved valuable in 
reconciling many of the discoveries of history and of 
natural science with the Christian faith. Efforts have 
also been made to simplify theology by the reduction 
of the large and complex, even conflicting, mass of Chris- 
tian tenets and beliefs, given in history or represented 
in various Christian sects, to a few simple principles in 
which all must agree, resting for their confirmation not 
on metaphysics, but on the genuine Christian instincts 
as revealed in the New Testament. There has been at- 
tained also a better philosophical method for meeting 
the difficulties and perplexities of the age. 

But these attempts at the better interpretation of re- 
vealed religion, and the formation of more consistent 
theological systems, have found a temporary rival in 
efforts to create, first of all, a better system of " natural 
theology," as it may be called, which shall take account 
of the doctrine of evolution and other discoveries of natural 
science since Paley's time and the day of the Bridge- 
water Treatises. Those who aim at a reconciliation of 
religion with science treat the idea of evolution as a 
mediating principle by which the conflict between science 
and religion may be overcome. This effort is the more 

488 



RELIGION 

significant, in view of the popular interest in evolution 
. — a word which has become almost the watchword of 
the age. From this point of view the invasion of re- 
ligious territory by scientific men (Huxley, Tyndale, 
Haeckel, and others), and the counter-invasion of scien- 
tific territory by philosophers and theologians, give 
promise of some mutual understanding in the future. 

Ill 

It remains now to turn to another most potent motive 
which has affected the fortunes of religion in the nine- 
teenth century. It may be called Nationalism, meaning 
by the term that higher conception of the life of the state 
or nation, slowly but most effectively asserting itself 
throughout the nineteenth century, never apart from 
religious convictions, always indeed in their support 
and furtherance. In illustration of this point, we turn 
again to the French Revolution, as giving the momentum, 
both directly and by way of reaction, to the conception 
of the sac redness of the state, as an ultimate fact in 
God's government of the world. In that fearful out- 
burst of the French people, their long pent-up indigna- 
tion was vented no less against the state than against 
the Church — the one a device of kings and lawgivers for 
holding mankind in subjection, as the other was a scheme 
for the same end by a designing priesthood. The human- 
itarian sentiment received in consequence at this im- 
pressive moment a direction of antipathy to nationality 
as an evil to be overcome, or at least to be kept in sub- 
jection to some higher principle, if the rights of man 
were to be secured. Something even of this negative 
mood entered into the formation of the American Con- 
stitution, where there is to be noted a singular omission 
of any reference to Deity as the author and preserver of 
the national life. On the continent of Europe there was 

489 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the phenomenon of Napoleon building on the ruins of 
the French Revolution, while yet preserving the destruc-. 
tive motives which inspired it. Napoleon revived the 
dream of empire, in whose expansive embrace the na- 
tions of Europe were to be subordinated, if not suppressed 
altogether. He proposed to reconstruct the map of 
Europe, as though nationalities and crowns were purely 
human artificial arrangements to be disposed of at his 
sovereign pleasure. 

The failure of the French nation, its demonstrated 
inability to do the proper work of a state, as well as the 
fact that the career of a Napoleon was possible, indicates 
inherent weakness in all the nations of Europe at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century. They existed 
either in repose, and even stagnation, after the long 
turmoil of the age of the Protestant Reformation, averse 
to change, distrustful of enthusiasm, or were content 
to strive for purely selfish aims. In accordance with 
the principle that the people existed for the state, rulers 
followed their personal whims, indifferent to moral sanc- 
tions, heedless of the growing evils calling aloud for 
redress. Such in particular was the condition in France. 
It was better in England, but even there the same ten- 
dency existed, manifested in the unnecessary alienation 
of the American colonies. However this may be, there 
has been a reaction against nationality during the nine- 
teenth century. The nations have been forced to strug- 
gle against this opposition, and through the struggle 
they have attained their rebirth, their purification. 

The subject is connected with the fortunes of religion 
in many ways. The indifference to nationality, the 
distrust of the nation as incompetent for the exigencies 
of life, the placing of an abstract humanity as an ideal 
above nationality, so that to labor directly for the inter- 
ests of humanity apart from the well-being of the nation, 
and even in its defiance, became the motive of reformers — 

490 



RELIGION 

these characteristics, when seen in the religious sphere, 
•have led to a reaction against the various forms of Prot- 
estantism, and especially as represented in the state 
Churches. The Roman Catholic Church, which in all 
its history has subordinated national distinctions to 
the higher interests of a common Christendom, had fallen 
into inefficiency in the eighteenth century, and was no 
longer reckoned a force worthy of consideration, either 
by religious thinkers or by statesmen. But in the first 
third of the nineteenth century there came a change, 
when the Roman Church arose from its lethargy to meet 
the demand imposed upon it by the timid fears of states- 
men and ecclesiastics, as the safeguard of religion and 
morality, where national Churches or particular Churches 
were thought to have failed. The Napoleonic aspiration 
after universal empire and the frantic effort to realize 
it by rearranging or suppressing nationalities has its 
counterpart in the religious world in the effort to restore 
a Christian empire with the Papacy at its head, as in 
the Middle Ages. The effect of this ambition may be 
seen in Germany and other countries, but is most clearly 
manifest in England, where the Oxford Movement (1833) 
appears as an unnational, if not anti-national, uprising 
in behalf of some imperfectly conceived cosmopolitan 
Church designated as "Catholicity." The date of the 
"Movement," as Newman fixed it, was Keble's sermon 
on the "Apostacy of the National Church." This 
same feeling, that national existence is inferior in im- 
portance to humanitarian reforms or to the expression 
of religion in some other shape than in any particular or 
national Church, has been shown in the break with the 
Established Church in Scotland, or in the difficulties 
experienced in Germany in consolidating the forms of 
Protestantism in a strong state Church, or in the aspira- 
tions after some universal form of religion to be accom- 
plished by a parliament of religions. Beneath these 

491 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

various schemes there is the common principle that 
humanity is a worthier object of devotion than the state, 
and constitutes a higher ideal in whose cause to labor. 
This conviction, it may be added, has been strengthened 
vastly by the extraordinary way in which, during the 
nineteenth century, the whole world has been brought 
together by the material forces of steam and electricity. 

That there is here a great truth no one can deny, but 
the point to be noticed now is that nationality has been 
at a disadvantage in the competition with humanity. 
Out of the necessities of the situation there has been born 
the spirit of a deeper inquiry into the place and signif- 
icance of the nation as the indispensable medium by 
which the highest result can be secured for the world 
at large. Thus we have the studies in this direction of 
German students, Hegel and Siahl, Trendelenburg and 
Bluntschli, Maurice in England, and in America Mul- 
ford in his book The Nation, all of them combating the 
motive of Comte and setting forth the essential, even 
the eternal, significance of nationality. The ancient 
doctrine is still preserved that the people exist for the 
state, but it is justified on the ground that the state also 
exists for the people, for the freedom of the individual 
man, so that through the state the rights of man are 
better subserved and more securely guaranteed than by 
an exclusive one-sided devotion to the cause of an ab- 
stract humanity. 

As the nineteenth century drew to its close, it became 
increasingly apparent that the nations had emerged 
from the depression in which they were found when the 
century opened. America may be said to have attained 
the consciousness of nationality in its highest form in 
consequence of the Civil War, and to have entered from 
that time upon a new career. In that awful conflict, 
whose origin dates back to the rise of the anti-slavery 
movement, may be discerned the issue of the century — 

492 



RELIGION 

humanitarianism, on the one hand, contending for the 
rights of man, careless, if need be, for the national unity 
if only a great reform could be secured ; and on the other 
hand, the nation, slowly realizing that slavery was a 
force hostile to national unity and integrity, and on this 
ground demanding its suppression. The two attitudes 
in this instance appear organically related, while yet 
they spring from distinct and separate motives. In 
1870 Germany and Italy took their places in the family 
of nations. Nor should there be omission to mention 
Greece, which, after its subsidence for hundreds of years, 
again attained its national independence. 

It has become further apparent that it is to the Protes- 
tant nations, America, England, and Germany, that the 
leading place must be conceded, together with the deter- 
mination of the world's fortunes. And to these must be 
added Russia, which is also outside the pale of Latin 
Christianity. Those nations remaining in alliance with 
the Papacy are, for the present at least, in an inferior 
position. 

The triumphant assertion of the spiritual significance 
of nationality in the latter part of the nineteenth century 
has made it further apparent that the forces working 
for religion, and especially for its Protestant forms, were 
stronger than the forces in opposition. The nation 
enters the arena of the controversy as a spiritual force, 
assuming as a first principle the existence of God and 
His supernatural government of the world. Never was 
this truth more impressively illustrated than in the 
experience of Lincoln, who, when he became President 
of the United States in the supreme crisis of its history, 
ceased to be indifferent to religion and passed into a 
devout belief in the mysterious control of the destiny 
of the nation by a sovereign, omnipotent hand. As the 
indifference to nationality was among the causes of 
religious doubt and of the weakness in the Churches in 

493 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the middle of the century, so the triumphant assertion 
of nationality has contributed to turn the tide towards 
theistic belief and the Christian faith. 

To give a full exposition of the inner relationship of 
the nation to religion and the Churches is not possible 
here, but some remarks may be offered which will tend 
to illustrate their organic connection. 

(i) In any large historical survey the nation appears 
as guided by religious leaders. Religion is seen to have 
flourished in proportion as the nation is conscious of 
its strength and destiny. When the Roman Empire 
broke down the nationalities and merged them in a 
large composite unity, it broke down also religious faiths, 
and its own religion as well, till scepticism was the 
result and a consequent immorality. All attempts to 
build up religion on the basis of empire, as distinct from 
nationality, ended in failure. 

(2) The Christian religion tended from the first to 
break up the empire and to restore nationality. Ul- 
timately it became manifest that the cause which under- 
mined the Roman Empire and accomplished its down- 
fall was the Christian Church. In its Eastern half the 
empire was resolved into nationalities. In the West a 
Church, Latin Christendom, rose upon its ruins, but 
within this Latin Christendom the spirit of nationality 
began at once to work, forcing its way against the op- 
position of the Papacy, till, in the age of the Protestant 
Reformation, when nationality was felt as a conscious 
motive, it sundered Latin Christendom into fragments. 

(3) The Old Testament in its form as a whole is simply 
the history of a nation from its birth through all its 
fortunes. Never did religion rise to a diviner and fuller 
expression than under the realization of the conviction 
that God was protecting the nation and determining its 
career. The Hebrew prophets were primarily states- 
men, devoted to the nationality, as the incarnation of 

494 



RELIGION 

the divine will, in whose fortunes were revealed the 
divine purpose. Any nation which has not the similar 
conviction that it is the chosen people of God, and called 
to some important task, cannot maintain its indepen- 
dence and integrity, and has no future. This con- 
viction to-day inspires the leading nations of the world. 

(4) The nation mediates between humanitarianism 
and individualism. In serving its own ends and seeking 
to accomplish its mission, it works for the good of all, 
and also for the freedom of the individual man. The 
tendency of humanitarianism as a motive apart from 
the higher life of the state, or apart from its impersona- 
tion in Christ as its head and leader, is to weaken in- 
dividualism and to defeat the very end it wishes to sub- 
serve, the achievement of the rights of man. Humanity 
as a whole lacks the visible, tangible embodiment of 
the nation. It has not yet the consciousness of itself 
nor of its unity. It cannot respond to the needs it 
awakens. It does not, as a whole, realize its relationship 
to God, nor is it placed in such a position as to make it 
feel the need of God. It is in danger of becoming an 
abstraction in so far as it exists without relationships. 
But the nation is close at hand, near, and felt as a 
moral personality or being, seeking ideal ends which are 
also within the bounds of possibility. Humanity as a 
whole undertakes no enterprises which make it tremble 
as it comes to unknown, trackless seas. But when the 
nation comes to great crises, where human wisdom is 
powerless to direct its course, it falls back instinctively 
and by necessity upon the belief in the guidance of God. 
Thus the nation as a whole appears in a higher form 
of personality than individual men can achieve, even 
the greatest men, and so prepares the way for the belief 
in the still higher, the invisible, infinite personality of 
God. 

(5) The nation as a moral personality and depending 

495 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

upon God becomes the safeguard of morals. If there 
has been a decline in morality in the nineteenth century, 
as some maintain, shown in the general weakening of 
moral sanctions, or by the increase of divorce and in- 
difference to the sacredness of family life, it must be 
attributed in some measure to the indifference to nation- 
ality from the time that political liberalism resting on 
an abstract humanitarianism, or in combination with a 
scientific naturalism, gained the ascendency. So far 
as this tendency has in any degree invaded the Christian 
Church it has been powerless to effect a change for the 
better. The great men whom humanity is directed to 
worship do not constitute a moral standard, nor can 
scientific postulates be made a basis for moral culture; 
for nature is at least unmoral, if not, as some assert, 
immoral, and it is only as acted upon by man that nature 
gives response to the increasing purpose of the world. 
Religious truths — the personality of God, His creation 
and government of the world, immortality, and the 
freedom of the will — these are shattered, we are told, 
"by the great eternal iron laws of the universe," or 
" are in hopeless contradiction with the most solid truths 
of empirical science." And so, it must be added, are the 
sanctions of ethics and moral law. It is when we turn 
to the state, to the moral personality of the nation, that 
we encounter other laws and living forces which restore 
what an empirical science or a transcendental humani- 
tarianism has broken down. Here the supreme test is 
spiritual — the well-being of the nationality. The state 
must build upon the family as its corner-stone; it must 
enforce those moral laws which the history of nations, as 
well as human experience in its best estate, reveal to be 
the inmost expression of the normal life of man. 

The beginning of a new century may seem like an 
artificial division of time, but the self -consciousness 
with which the nineteenth century closed, the efforts 

496 



RELIGION 

at introversive estimates of its place in history and of 
the work it had accomplished, indicate something more 
than a conventional barrier to be passed. Prophecies 
in regard to the new age may be futile, for God reserves 
to Himself the knowledge of the future. But it is much 
if we can to any extent read the meaning of the past and 
detect the sources of its strength and weakness. And 
for the rest, Christian faith and hope are inextinguish- 
able, looking forward to the fulfilment of the Christian 
ideal — that higher unity where Christ appears as the 
embodiment of humanity and the voice of its yearning 
for a perfect brotherhood ; where the nation also acknowl- 
edges Him as its overlord, so that, in the words of Christian 
prophecy, the kingdoms of this world shall become the 
kingdom of our God and of His Christ. In that ideal 
conception, the dominium belongs to the state, and the 
ministerium to the Christian Church. 

Alexander V. G. Allen. 
21 



THE JEWS AND JUDAISM 

T^HE opening years of the nineteenth century found 
*■ the Jew blinded by the light of a new sun, the rays 
of which were beating upon the Ghetto and were forcing 
him to take off, one by one, the many garments with 
which he had clothed himself during the hostile Middle 
Ages. For the Jew these Middle Ages did not end with 
the Reformation and the Renaissance; but only dis- 
appeared in the transformation brought about gradually 
by the French Revolution. The beginning of the twen- 
tieth century sees him putting on some of these gar- 
ments again, and trying to save his own warmth from 
being lost in the coldness of the outside world. During 
this period the Jew has passed through more upheavals 
than many nations have during three or four times the 
number of years. What outward struggles has he not 
been called upon to experience; through what alternat- 
ing seasons of joy and sorrow has he not passed ! What 
changes even within his own body has he not sustained ! 
The modern European and American world has had a 
hard fight to find its way into its present changed con- 
dition ; but much harder by far was the task laid upon 
the Jew ; and, whether he has succeeded or not, he has 
made an honest fight. Evidences of the struggle abound 
on every hand, and the road is strewn with many a dead 
hope and many a lost opportunity. The Jew was bound 
more firmly to ancient traditions; and so interwoven 
were these ancient traditions with his whole being that 
the new life into which he came had of necessity to be 

498 



RELIGION 

blended with the old. The tale of the Jew of the nine- 
teenth century is a record of his endeavor to do justice 
to the two demands which were made upon him : the one 
from the outside world — to fit himself to take his place 
worthily and do his work side by side with the other 
citizens of the state in which he lived; the other from 
within his own ranks — to hannonize his religious belief 
with his new point of view and to adapt his religious 
exercises to modern social conditions. 

EMANCIPATION OF THE JEWS 

The struggle of the Jews in the various European 
countries for civil rights and for equality before the 
law was long drawn out, and was marked by varying 
fortunes dependent upon the political conditions of these 
countries. More than seventy years of the century 
had passed before this struggle had been fought out. 
Though it is true that a beginning was made in Germany 
and Austria (1750 and 1781), to France belongs the 
honor of having been the first to really do away with 
the mass of anti- Jewish legislation which the centuries 
preceding had piled up. On the 27th of September, 
1 79 1, the National Assembly at one stroke removed all 
the disabilities under which the Jews had been living — 
distinctive dress, special Jew's oath, Jew's tax, forced 
residence in certain localities, etc. From France, and 
under the influence which that country then exercised, 
the emancipation of the Jews spread to Belgium and 
Holland, and to some of the states of Germany; but 
the rest of Europe was not yet ready for this emancipa- 
tion. The reaction which marks the period between 
1 81 4 and 1848 made itself felt upon the Jews, restoring, 
in many places, the disabilities under which they had 
formerly lived. The " Judengassen " became once more 
inhabited, and the principles of freedom and liberty 

499 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

for all members of the state seemed to have been well- 
nigh forgotten. The Revolution of 1830 stayed the down- 
ward course in some of the German states ; but it was 
not until 1848 that the second great period in Jewish 
emancipation came about. In the breaking down of 
old institutions it was natural that the exceptional laws 
against the Jews should go also. The German Par- 
liament of 1848, at Frankfort, forcefully proclaimed the 
doctrine of religious liberty; and of this parliament a 
Jew, Gabriel Riesser, was vice-president. But it was 
not until the formation of the German Empire, in 1871, 
that the emancipation of the Jews, which had gradually 
made its way in the various states, was carried through 
for the whole of that empire. In 1867, a decree was 
issued in Austria by virtue of which all citizens were 
declared equal before the law, and in 1870 the walls 
of the Ghetto fell in Rome. In 1874, Jews were admitted 
to the rank of citizens in Switzerland. In 1878, the 
Congress of Berlin, the leading spirit of which (Disraeli) 
was of the Jewish race, demanded equal rights for the 
Jews living in the Balkan Peninsula. These rights 
were accorded by the various states there, with the 
exception of Roumania; which, in spite of the treaty 
and in spite of the promises made at the time, still con- 
tinues to refuse to allow the Jews living within its borders 
to become citizens or to treat them as an integral part 
of the population. In Turkey the laws which put certain 
restrictions upon non-Mohammedan citizens were sen- 
sibly changed in 1839; so that the Jews living in the 
dominions of the Sultan suffer from no exceptional 
legislation. 

The cause of Jewish emancipation in England suf- 
fered no such sudden changes as it did on the conti- 
nent. It proceeded by regular stages through the ab- 
rogation of the Act of Test in 1828, the admission of 
Jews as citizens of London in 1830, as sheriffs in 1835, 

500 



RELIGION 

as magistrates in 1845, and in 1858 as members of Parlia- 
ment by the removal of the words " upon the faith of a 
Christian" in the oath taken by the members. There 
can be no doubt that the emancipation in England, 
though long drawn out and fiercely contested, was more 
effective than anywhere else, owing to the fact that it 
was progressive in character and based upon the idea 
of rights demanded and not upon that of favors granted. 
Nothing was asked of the Jews in England other than 
that they be good citizens of the state; while the whole 
continental legislation regarding them, from the time of 
Napoleon on, had on the part of the legislators only one 
object in view — to break up the cohesion of the Jews as 
a body and to pave the way for their disappearance as 
a distinctive group. The idea that emancipation was a 
favor and not a right brought it about that the Jews 
themselves aided in their own disintegration. They 
believed that it was their duty to show themselves more 
patriotic than were the other citizens of the state in which 
they lived, as they were receiving greater favors. And 
so, even though Jews have sat in the parliaments of 
various continental states, they have with few exceptions 
steadfastly refused to acknowledge themselves to be 
in any way representatives of their brethren, and in 
some cases (notably in France) during the last few years 
have either remained supinely indifferent when Jewish 
questions were before their several parliaments, or have 
even aided those whose agitation was directed against 
their fellow- Jews. In England, on the contrary, the 
Jewish members of Parliament have never forgotten 
that, in addition to their interests as citizens of England, 
they have a duty to perform to the Jews, whom they also 
represent, and they have therefore been able, while 
giving their best sendees to the state, to be also useful 
to their co-religionists. It may be due to this cause 
that the emancipation of Jews on the continent has 

501 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

in no way been able to stem the recrudescence of anti- 
Semitism; while it has undoubtedly done this in 
England. The opposite effect is most clearly seen in 
Algiers, where the wholesale emancipation of the Jews 
in 1870, through the efforts of Cremieux, that bold 
champion of his people, has in a large measure con- 
tributed to make the riots possible which have in late 
years been witnessed in that French colony. Neither 
the population of Algeria nor the Jews there were 
at that time ready for such a measure; it did not 
therefore come as the result of a development among 
the people, but as something imposed upon them by 
the government. 

In addition to Roumania, Russia is practically the 
only country which has refused to enter the European 
concert, and which by means of laws and ordinances 
represents still the dark period of the Middle Ages. It 
has turned the provinces on its western borders into a 
tremendous Ghetto, and driven the Jews to exile by 
making life within that pale practically impossible. 
Even Portugal in 1821, and Spain in 1868 (the two coun- 
tries from which the Jews had been banished for a great 
number of years), opened their doors to them once more; 
though few Jews have ventured to return to the Penin- 
sula, despite the fact that in 1886 a committee was 
formed in Madrid for the promotion of Jewish immigra- 
tion into Spain. 

THE WANDERING JEW 

The Wandering Jew is not the Jew of legend, but the 
Jewish people of history. The dislocation of large 
Jewish bodies, which was characteristic of the Middle 
Ages, has been kept up during the nineteenth century ; 
and this dislocation has, as in former times, profoundly 
modified Judaism in the various countries. From the 

502 



RELIGION 

fifteenth century on to the nineteenth, hostile legislation 
on the part of Western Europe had been continually 
driving the Jews to the East. The expulsion from 
Spain and Portugal, at the end of the fifteenth century, 
forced several hundred thousand into Turkey; while 
the hardships which they had to suffer in the smaller 
German states and in Austria caused large numbers 
to seek a refuge in Poland and Russia. The tide 
commenced to turn westward about the middle of the 
eighteenth century, though bands of Jews from Poland 
had been driven into Germany, Italy, and Holland in 
the terrible years of the Chmelnicki persecutions (1648- 
1651). The readmission of Jews into England, the 
relative kindness of Frederick William of Prussia 
and of Frederick the Great, aided a certain slow but 
continuous infiltration from Poland, so that at the 
end of the eighteenth or the first half of the nine- 
teenth century these Polish Jews were to be found 
in all parts of Germany, Holland, and England. This 
slow migration back again to Western Europe took 
on, however, much larger proportions in the latter part 
of the nineteenth century; but before this could happen 
a strong movement still farther westward had already 
taken place. Jews were among the earliest settlers 
on the American continent. They were in nearly every 
case of Spanish or Portuguese descent, having come 
from Holland and England to the possessions which 
these powers held on the new continent. In the middle 
of the nineteenth century, when the tide of immigration 
from Germany was at its height, a large number of 
Jews from the southern states and the Rhine region 
found their way to these shores. The Russian atrocities 
of 1882 and the following years caused a greater shifting 
of the Jewish population westward than can be paralleled 
at any previous time. It has been estimated that be- 
tween the years 1882 and 1900 fully one million Russian 

503 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Jews left their homes in the pale of settlement, finding 
new dwelling-places in England, Germany, and France. 
The largest number (probably half a million) came to 
the United States and Canada. Untoward economic 
conditions existing in Galicia, and the frequent out- 
breaks of anti-Semitism there, forced out during the 90's 
a large number of Galician Jews; and in 1899 and 1900 
the hostility of the Roumanian government has made it 
impossible for thousands of Jews to remain in a coun- 
try in which most of them had been born ; and, under cir- 
cumstances the like of which has hardly ever before been 
seen, bands of the Roumanian Jews have been wander- 
ing over Europe, seeking the means by which to come to 
the American continent in order there to establish them- 
selves anew. There are between ten and eleven million 
Jews to-day in the world : of these, about nine million 
live in Europe; one million in the United States and 
Canada; three hundred and fifty thousand in Africa; 
three hundred and fifty thousand in Asia; and sixteen 
thousand in Australasia. 

COMMUNAL ORGANIZATION 

All these changed circumstances variously modified 
the organization of the Jewish communities. Napoleon's 
attempt in 1807, as the result of the Sanhedrin which 
he had convened in Paris, to found this organization 
upon a modern basis, dividing the Jews of France into 
certain consistories and arrondissements, had an effect 
not only upon France, but also upon those countries 
which for a time were under his influence (Holland, 
Belgium, etc.), and even upon many of the German states. 
In 1808 such consistories were established in Westphalia 
and Cassel; in 1809, an Oberrath was created in Baden; 
and in 1828 and 1831 an Oberkirchenbehoerde in Wiir- 
temberg. It was due also to Napoleon that in France 

504 



RELIGION 

and Germany the Jews were obliged to adopt family 
names, they having, in most cases, still retained the 
Oriental custom of simply adding to their own praenomen 
that of their father. Prussia was the only one of the 
German states which was not so affected. There the 
state exercises a supervisory influence, compelling all 
the Jews to be members of the Jewish community, but 
in no way further regulating the communal life. When 
the Reform tendencies commenced to make themselves 
felt in the larger Jewish communities, the Orthodox 
members safeguarded their own interests by making 
use of the law passed in 1873, mainly through the efforts 
of the Jew Lasker, which enabled the people to declare 
themselves " confessionslos " and form their own syna- 
gogues, thus nearing in a measure the system followed 
in English-speaking countries. In England and Ameri- 
ca no such organization was effected, as the state does 
not there take cognizance of the religious belief of the 
people. In both these countries attempts have been 
made by the Jews themselves to organize under one 
head upon a purely religious basis, but without much 
success. In France there is a Chief Rabbi of the Jews 
who is recognized by the state as their rabbi and head. 
But the Chief Rabbi of the Jews in the British Empire, 
though he is nominally the head of the Jews in the king- 
dom, has no actual position as such, and is even not 
recognized by certain schools of Jews themselves. The 
Sefardim, or descendants of Spanish and Portuguese 
Jews, have always kept themselves distinct, and have 
their own Chief Rabbi, or Haham. In the year 1840, 
the more liberal-minded element among the London 
Jews cut themselves loose from the United Synagogue 
and formed a Reform party, their example being followed 
in Manchester and Bradford. Neither they nor the 
recent immigrants from Russia, who have formed their 
own " Federation of Synagogues " recognize the authority 

505 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

of the Chief Rabbi. This more congregational system 
has been carried to its utmost limits in the United States, 
where each congregation is a law unto itself and ab- 
solutely rejects any interference on the part of any larger 
body. From time to time a desire has been manifested 
to supersede this purely congregational system by some 
form of union. The late Dr. Isaac M. Wise, of Cincin- 
nati, had at various times attempted to bring the Jews 
of the United States together with an authoritative 
synod at their head. Out of this and other attempts 
have come the Central Conference of American Rabbis 
and The Union of American Congregations (founded 
in 1873), which now comprises about ninety -one con- 
gregations. These organizations, however, do not by 
any means represent either all of the Jewish ministers 
or all of the Jewish congregations, and the Union 
itself is merely a deliberative bod} 7 having no power 
to do anything in the internal affairs of one of its 
constituent synagogues. Since the union of Ameri- 
can Jewish congregations comprises only such as 
stand upon a Reform platform, a union of Orthodox 
congregations was formed in New York two or three 
years ago, and it is hoped that this organization will 
do much towards binding together the very many con- 
gregations of those who adhere strictly to traditional 
Judaism. 

But the organization of Jews as a church has not been 
found sufficient. Spread over so large a portion of the 
earth and coming under such vanning influences, it 
was inevitable that the theological differences which 
already existed should grow apace, and a great cleavage 
be made between the Orthodox and the Reform wing 
of the synagogue. It was early felt that some more 
secular bond must be found which should unite the 
Jews of various persuasions for common and concerted 
action. The first attempt in this direction was nobly 

.S06 



RELIGION 

made by Narcisse Leven, Eugene Emanuel, Charles 
Netter, and a few others, in founding (1880) the "Alli- 
ance Israelite Universelle " in Paris, whose object it was 
to aid in removing Jewish disabilities wherever they 
might exist, and to raise the spiritual condition of their 
coreligionists in Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, and 
Western Asia by the founding of schools. From these 
small beginnings the Alliance has grown to be an im- 
portant factor in the conservation of Jewish interests. 
Faithful to its programme, it has established a large 
number of elementary and technical schools, and has 
intervened actively in Algeria, Morocco, the Turkish 
Empire, and Persia whenever Jews or Jewish interests 
were in any way threatened. Its attempt, however, 
to represent the whole Jewish people has not been success- 
ful; for the reason that it has been allied too closely 
with French national interests; and side by side with 
the "Alliance Francaise" it has been an active prop- 
agandist of the French language and of French culture 
in the East. This one-sidedness of its work is best seen 
in the fact that by its side similar organizations have 
been created in other countries, " The Board of Delegates 
of American Israelites" in the United States, "The 
Anglo- Jewish Association" in England, "The Israeli- 
tisch Alliance " in Austria, and the " Deutsche Gemeinde- 
bund" in Germany. At one time it was hoped that 
the B'nai B'rith, established in this country in 1843, 
by Isidor Busch, Julius Bien, and others, would form 
such a union of Jews, where the theological differences 
would be eliminated. But though this order, which 
has 315 lodges in.the United States and Canada, has 
established itself in such countries as Germany, Rou- 
mania, Austria, Algeria, Bulgaria, and Egypt, and 
despite the good work it has so far done, the mere 
fact that it is a secret organization prevents it from 
standing forth as the representative of international 

507 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Jewry. Where, then, and in what manner is such a 
body to be found? 

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 

The economic condition of the Jews in the large Eastern 
European Ghettos is, naturally, extremely bad. Hud- 
dled together, either in certain districts of large towns 
or in villages where they form the greater part of the 
population, they are compelled to live off and on each 
other. Crowded into certain walks of life by anti- Jewish 
legislation or anti- Jewish sentiment, few of them can 
gain more than sufficient to keep body and soul together. 
In Galicia it has been estimated that five thousand Jews 
perish every year from typhus-fever. The Jewish wax- 
miners in Boryslav, to take but one instance, were forced 
out of the mines and reduced to utter starvation, for no 
other reason but because they were Jews. The failure 
of the harvests in Southern Russia during the last few 
years has reduced the wage-earners in that part of the 
country to the position of dependants upon the charity 
of others; but the Jews who live there in such large 
numbers do not even benefit from the assistance sent 
by the government. Similar conditions prevail almost 
continually in the rest of the Russian pale and in Rou- 
mania. The standard of life has naturally been lowered 
among these people and their general morale has not 
come out of the trial unscathed. 

Nor must it be forgotten that the violent dislocation 
of hundreds of thousands of people, such as has taken 
place among the Jews during the last quarter of the 
nineteenth century, has naturally disturbed existing 
economic conditions, not only among the Jews them- 
selves, but also among those into whose midst they 
came. These outcasts from Eastern Europe did not 
come to virgin soil as did the Pilgrim Fathers, but to 

508 



RELIGION 

cities and towns which were already filled with a pro- 
letariat engaged in the eager fight for life. The Jews 
of Berlin, Paris, London, and New York, had their 
hands full with the proper care of the needy ones already 
in their midst. 

It is a mistake to suppose that the Jews as a people 
are rich. The proletariat among them is proportion- 
ately much larger than it is among other people; and 
thus it came about that the Jewish quarters in all 
the large cities were already well filled when they were 
(almost at a moment's notice) called upon to receive 
double or triple the number they already held. The 
actual number of the Jewish poor was thereby greatly 
increased; for many a family that had been wealthy or 
in easy circumstances in Russia, Galicia, or Roumania, 
had been reduced to want and been compelled to take 
its place among those who needed the help of their 
brethren. This help was freely and cheerfully given 
all the world over. Great sacrifices were made by the 
richer Jews to meet the pressing needs of the hour, and, 
with no help from the outside world, excepting the London 
Mansion House Fund in 1882, the thousands and tens 
of thousands of immigrants were cared for. The Jew- 
ish charitable organizations, the development of which 
has been during the latter half of the nineteenth century 
the brightest spot in Jewish communal life, rose to the 
demands of the occasion, and the more than princely 
munificence of Baron and Baroness Maurice de Hirsch, 
in regard to the Russian Jews, may justly be looked 
upon with pride. 

New Ghettos, however, were formed in nearly all 
the cities to which these immigrants came; and this 
name for the habitat of the poorer Jews became again 
familiar, aided by the popularity which some modern 
novelists had given to it. In the Middle Ages and down 
to our own time the Jews had been forced by the state 

509 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

to live apart in such Ghettos ; sometimes for their own 
protection, sometimes to preserve the outside world 
from contact with them. The modern Ghetto is a volun- 
tary gathering of the Jews for the purpose of mutual 
help and from a feeling of reciprocal obligations. To 
the outside observer it presents an unsightly appearance; 
it is the abode of poor people, and its population is usually 
strange in dress, manners, and speech. The sweating 
system (which in one form or another is to be found 
in all these Ghettos) has been a dreadful incentive tow- 
ards grinding the face of the poor; and the results of 
too great a hoarding are often quite apparent; so that 
the general morality of the Jews in these Ghettos has 
suffered in consequence. A people ignorant of the 
language of their new home are a prey to the evil-in- 
tended, who make use of their ignorance for their own 
commercial and political advancement. This has been 
notably seen in the city of New York, where a lax city 
government has permitted the vampires of society to 
fasten their fangs upon the Ghetto and to produce con- 
ditions which call for the active interference of all those 
forces which seek to stamp out crime and vice. But, 
on the other hand, to one who is acquainted with the 
inner life of the Ghetto the virtues which have hitherto 
characterized the Jews — industry and sobriety — are 
still to be found there; much more frequently than in 
those parts where the richer classes congregate, and 
whose wealth enables them to withdraw their doings 
from the public gaze. Its members are as industrious 
as bees in a hive; and though extremely litigatious, 
drunkenness is unknown and actual crime is compara- 
tively rare. 

In order to correct the abuses of the Ghetto, two things 
are absolutely necessary — the increase of the actual 
number of Jews there must be stopped, and the crowding 
into certain distinct fields of work must be brought to 

5io 



RELIGION 

an end. A determined effort has already been made to 
force the new immigrants into less crowded parts of the 
land to which they come. In this country this is being 
done by the United Hebrew Charities, and notably by 
the B'nai B'rith. A distinct clannish feeling has, how- 
ever, to be overcome, and a fear of venturing into an 
unknown country where the immigrant will be sur- 
rounded by people who do not understand his peculiar 
social and religious customs. 

That the Jew has taken by preference to certain 
branches of trade and work is due to the fact that 
anti -Jewish legislation has for centuries closed many 
walks of life to him, and the guild organization 
excluded him rigorously from many spheres of ac- 
tivity. Then, too, his richly developed home life has 
induced a certain distaste for occupations which take 
the wage - earner out of his home and away from 
his family. That, however, these inherited instincts 
can easily be overcome is clearly seen whenever the 
occasion offers. Even in Amsterdam, where three- 
fourths of the diamond industry is in the hands of Jews, 
there are to be found Jewish cobblers, cigar-makers, 
plumbers, carpet - weavers, mattress - makers, watch- 
makers, etc. In the East End of London there are, 
it is true, ten thousand Jews who are engaged in the 
clothes-making trades, but the rest of the forty thousand 
Jewish wage-earners of this quarter are scattered over 
all possible branches of work — masonry, metal -working, 
textile industries, furniture - making, cap -making, and 
the like. The same is true of New York, where, although 
the number of Jews employed in the tailoring industries 
is disproportionately large, the following list of Hebrew 
unions shows how far afield the Jewish workman has 
gone : Cap - Makers, Cap-Blockers, Shirt - Makers, Mat- 
tress-Makers, Purse -Makers, Liberty Musical Union, 
Jewish Chorus Union, Jewellers' Union, Tin-Smithers' 

511 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Union, Bill - Posters, Waiters' Alliance, Architectural 
Ironworkers, Hebrew Typographical Union, Tobacco 
Cutters, Paper - Makers, Bookbinders. The same is 
relatively true of all other countries where Jews live in 
large numbers. 

It is a popular misconception that the Jew has an 
innate distaste for agriculture. His continued com- 
mercial life, forced upon him for many centuries, has, 
it is true, disaccustomed the Jew to the life of a 
tiller of the soil. But the Jewish state was largely 
an agricultural one; the legislation of the Bible and 
the later Law Books was clearly intended for an ag- 
ricultural people; and Jews have never shown an 
unwillingness to return again to the soil. In South- 
ern Russia there are to-day 225 Jewish colonies with a 
population of 100,000. In Palestine there are now more 
than twenty colonies with a population of more than 
5000, and similar agricultural colonies have been es- 
tablished at various times in the United States, Canada, 
and the Argentine Republic. In many cases, it is true, 
these colonies have not yet become self-supporting, but 
this has been due in a large measure to maladministra- 
tion and to the peculiar conditions under which the 
colonies were founded. 

It cannot be denied that a goodly part of the Jewish 
proletariat belongs to the Socialist party. The whole 
Biblical system is in itself not without a Socialist tinge ; 
and the two great founders of the modern system, La- 
salle and Marx, were Jews. It is no wonder that in 
Russia many of the leading anarchists were of the 
Jewish race, for the Jew suffered there from the evils 
which Nihilism was intended to correct ten times more 
than did his fellow-Russian. But the Jew is by nature 
peace-loving ; and under more favorable circumstances, 
and with the opportunity of a greater development of his 
faculties, Socialism in his midst has no very active life ; 

512 



RELIGION 

the Jew very soon becoming an ardent partisan of the 
existing state of affairs. 

INTERNAL RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 

The facility with which the Jews attach themselves 
to changed circumstances stands out characteristically 
through their whole history. It might, indeed, be said 
with some show of truth that this pliability is the weak 
side in the Jewish character. The readiness of the 
Jew to be almost anything and not simply his own self 
has been one of the factors producing a certain ill will 
against him. Disraeli was the most jingo of all im- 
perialists in England ; Lasker, the most ardent advocate 
of the newly constituted German Empire. This pliability 
is the result of the wandering life he has led and the 
various civilizations of which he has been a part. He 
had to find his way into Hellenism in Alexandria, into 
Moorish culture in Spain, into Slavism in Russia and 
Poland. When the first wave of the modern spirit com- 
menced to break from France eastward over the whole 
of Europe, it reached the Jew also. While in France 
the new spirit was largely political, in Germany it was 
more spiritual. In its political form as well as in its 
spiritual form it reacted not only upon the political 
condition of the Jew, but especially upon his mental 
attitude. The new spirit was intensely modern, in- 
tensely cosmopolitan, intensely Occidental, and intense- 
ly inductive. The Jew had preserved to a great degree 
his deductive, Oriental, particularistic, and ancient mode 
of thought and aspect of life. The two forces were bound 
to meet. As a great oak is met by the storm, so was 
Israel set upon by the fury of this terrible onslaught. 
It is of interest to see in what manner he emerged from 
this storm — whether he has been able to bend to its fury, 
to lose perhaps some of his leaves and even some of his 
2K 513 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

branches, but to change only in such a way as to be 
able to stand upright again when the storm is past. 

This great clash of ideas has produced what is known 
as the Reform movement. It had its origin in Germany 
under the spiritual influences of the regeneration of 
German letters produced by such men as Goethe, Schiller, 
Herder, Lessing, and Mendelssohn. It was aided in a 
large measure by the fact that the government in Ger- 
many, although distinctly opposed to anything which 
militates against the established order of things, mixes 
itself very seldom in the internal affairs of the Jewish 
communities. This Reform movement has colored the 
religious development of Judaism during the three- 
quarters of the century which is past. The heat of 
the controversy is now wellnigh spent. Many of those 
who stood in the front ranks have passed away, so that 
a more just estimate of its value can be reached. It 
was a period of tremendous upheavals, of great physical 
as well as mental pain. Many a congregation was 
split in twain, many a family disrupted. At one time 
it looked as if two distinct bodies of Jews would emerge 
from the struggle, and the union of Israel be destroyed 
forever. A common enemy — anti-Semitism — joined the 
two forces together for a common defence ; and the danger 
of such a split is now fairly a thing of the past. 

The latter half of the eighteenth century found the 
Jews of Middle Europe at the lowest intellectual and 
social point they had up till then reached. The effect 
of the long Jewish Middle Ages was plainly visible. 
Few great minds lit up the darkness, and an intel- 
lectual torpor seems to have spread its pall over every- 
thing. A passive uniformity of practice prevailed in 
all the communities, whether Sef arctic (Spanish and 
Portuguese) or Ashkenazic (German and Polish) ; a 
uniformity, because actual intellectual life had been 
made to run in one single groove. The Talmud had 

514 



RELIGION 

been the great saving of Judaism in the past. In the 
intellectual exercise which its study necessitated, the 
mind of the Jew had been given a field in which it could 
rove at will. Living apart from the rest of the world, with 
a wide jurisdiction over his own affairs, Talmudic law in its 
latest development was still the law supreme for the Jew. 
The Jewish Ghetto had everywhere the same aspect; 
the language in common use was, in all the Ashkenazic 
communities, the Judaeo - German in one of its various 
forms. A certain severity in evaluating those things 
which were part of the outside world made itself felt. 
There was ample time and ample occasion for the practice 
of all those forms and ceremonies with which the Judaism 
of the Middle Ages had willingly and gladly fenced in 
the law. There had been little occasion for the practice 
of the beautiful arts or for the cultivation of letters. Life 
in the Ghetto was not necessarily gloomy, but it was 
solemn. The law was not felt as a burden, but it re- 
quired the whole individual attention of those who bound 
themselves by it, from early morn till late at night, 
from the cradle to the grave. There was no place for 
things that come from outside, because there was no 
time to devote to them. 

But the new European spirit in its French political 
form was knocking hard at the gates of the Ghetto. 
Little by little it made its way here and there, into all 
sorts of nooks and corners. It was bound in time to 
be heard by some of those living behind these gates. 
The name of Moses Mendelssohn is indissolubly con- 
nected with the history of German Judaism during the 
latter part of the eighteenth century. It was due to 
him that a vehicle was found which the new spirit could 
use. Himself a strictly observant Jew, he felt the pulse 
of the new era. The friend of Lessing and of Nicolai, 
he entered fully into the revival which was then making 
itself felt. Through his translation of the Pentateuch 

515 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

(1778, etc.) into High-German, he prepared the way for 
the further introduction of German writings to the Jewish 
masses. This was bound to bring with it a larger culture 
and a greater freedom of thought. Many of his friends, 
such as Wessely, Hertz-Homberg, and David Friedland- 
er, stood by his side in this work. With the introduction 
of the German language and German literature, better 
and more modern schools were needed in which secular 
education should go hand in hand with the former one- 
sided religious training. David Friedlander was the 
first to found a school in the modern sense of the term; 
and he was followed by Jacobson in 1801, at Seesen, 
Westphalia, and at Cassel, and by Johlson, at Frankfort, 
in 1814. Between the years 1783 and 1807 such modern 
Jewish schools arose in Germany, Austria, Denmark, 
France, and even in Poland. Literature was cultivated, 
and the first Jewish journal (though still in Hebrew) 
was published in Konigsberg, 1783 (Hameassef — the 
Collector). The Gesellschaft der Freunde, founded in 
Berlin in 1792, was distinctly intended for the spread 
of this modern culture; yet Mendelssohn's own position 
was quite an untenable one. He was a thoroughly 
Orthodox Jew in practice, but his mental attitude was 
that of a modern German. He was and he was not a 
reformer. He held that it mattered little what philo- 
sophical position a Jew held, the Jew must observe all 
the ceremonies connected with the faith; these were 
binding upon him by the mere fact of his having been 
born into the Covenant. It is therefore no wonder that 
his translation was put under the bann in Hamburg, 
Altona, Fuerth, Posen, etc. His friend Friedlander 
wished to make of the synagogue a sort of Ethical Cult- 
ure Society; and Jacobson's preaching in Berlin con- 
tained very little of what was distinctly Jewish. The 
salons of Berlin, Konigsberg, and Vienna, which were 
presided over by brilliant women, who were more or 

5i6 



RELIGION 

less immediate disciples of Mendelssohn, nurtured the 
cosmopolitan spirit which was bound to be destructive 
of practical Judaism. That this fruit on the Tree of 
Knowledge ripened too quickly is seen from the fact that 
all the descendants of Mendelssohn, Friedlander, and 
others, led astray by this cosmopolitan spirit and the 
philosophic presentation of Christianity by Schleier- 
macher, have all become devoted members of the Lutheran 
Church and have been completely lost to Judaism. 

It was natural that these new influences should in- 
fluence also the training of the modern rabbis. Secular 
education had been introduced into primary schools, 
and in some places — as, for instance, Lombardy, in 
1820 — the government demanded a certain amount of 
secular knowledge from the candidates for rabbinical 
positions. The Jew also desired that his leaders should 
have the same training as he gave his children, that 
they should be educated in the same atmosphere in 
which he himself had grown up. The old rabbinical 
seminaries, or Yeshibot, in which the instruction was 
entirely on Talmudic lines, had already run their course ; 
the study had been found insufficient by the pupils 
themselves, and the schools of Frankfort, Fuerth, Metz, 
Hamburg, and Halberstadt had all been closed for 
want of students. The need of a modern seminary 
was felt quite early during the century; and in 1809, 
a Lehrer-Seminar was founded in Cassel. The earliest 
regular seminary for the training of rabbis, however, 
was founded in Padua in 1829. In Germany attempts 
had been made in the year 1840, but these attempts 
were unsuccessful. The first modern seminary was 
not founded in Gennany until the year 1854 (Breslau). 
Then followed Berlin, in 1872; Cincinnati, in 1873; 
Budapest, in 1876. Similar institutions exist now in 
London, Paris, and Vienna. 

In the first convulsions of the Mendelssohn period 

517 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the way was paved for the second period of the Reform 
movement which covers the first quarter of the nine- 
teenth century. The real issues touched the central 
point of Jewish life, the synagogue. It is interesting 
to note that during this period the chief questions were 
not so much theological as aesthetic. The aesthetic side 
of life could not be largely cultivated in the Ghetto; 
and the fonn of the service had greatly degenerated. 
In the course of centuries, so many additional prayers 
and songs and hymns had been added that the ritual 
was largely overburdened, and often tended rather to 
stifle than bring out the religious sense they were in- 
tended to conserve. Contact with the outside world 
created and fostered this aesthetic sense, and the in- 
fluences of the writings of such men as Lessing and 
Mendelssohn was largely in this direction. As this 
aesthetic sense made its way into the homes, so also did 
it carve out its way into the synagogue. Demands 
were heard for a shorter service; for the organ to ac- 
company the chanting of the reader; for the German 
language in some of the prayers and for the German 
sennon. Each point was bitterly contested; for the 
Orthodox wing had before it the wholesale apostasy of 
the Salon Jews. In order to introduce the vernacular 
into the service and into the sermon, private synagogues 
were opened by small coteries in Cassel (1809), Seesen 
(1810), Dessau (1812), and Berlin (1815). In Southern 
Germany the use of the vernacular was introduced be- 
tween the years 1817 and 1818, also in Hungary through 
the influence of Abraham Chorin. In some countries 
the government gave its active aid. In Vienna, in 1820, 
German was made obligatory, and as early as 1814 
Danish in Copenhagen. The greatest changes, how- 
ever, were made in the Hamburg temple (under Kley 
and Salomon, 181 8), where not only the service was made 
more aesthetic and the German language introduced, 

518 



RELIGION 

but certain prayers referring to the Messianic time were 
either omitted or altered. No wonder, then, that the 
Orthodox rabbis in Germany, with the support of the 
rabbis in various other countries, protested against 
such a course. The government even looked askance 
at these Reform proceedings, and in 1817 and 1823 or- 
dered a number of these private synagogues to be closed. 
A further cause for displeasure was the introduction in 
1814 of the confirmation of children in German, to re- 
place or supplement the old Barmitzvah, a clear imitation 
of the ceremony in the Protestant Church of Germany. 
Despite opposition, however, the confirmation found its 
way into Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, Cassel, Copen- 
hagen, etc. 

This aesthetic revolution in the synagogue could 
not, however, long remain the only outward sign of the 
new life. The great weakness of the Reform move- 
ment has been that it has lacked a philosophic basis; 
and, as in its first beginnings, with the exception of 
Hamburg, it took little note of the changed point of 
view from which those who fought for reform looked 
at the old theological ideas. ^Esthetic reform was the 
work largely of individual persons and individual con- 
gregations. No attempt had been made either to for- 
mulate the philosophic basis upon which the reform 
stood, or to provide a body which should regulate the 
form which the new order of things was to take on. Two 
attempts were made to remedy these evils, both closely 
related one to the other. 

The first was crystallized in what is now known as 
the "Science of Judaism"; by which is meant the un- 
trammelled, scientific investigation of the past history 
of the Jews. The want of this was severely felt just 
in those centres where reform had taken up its abode; 
and those who assisted at its birth did so with the avowed 
purpose of getting at the real kernel of Judaism by such 

519 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

investigation, and of freeing that kernel from the accre- 
tions of ages. They saw also that some means had to 
be found by which the result of these researches could 
be brought before the people. The Mendelssohn pe- 
riod had also felt this ; but its organ had been written 
in Hebrew, and could not, therefore, appeal to those who 
wished for the intellectual advancement of the Jews 
upon modern lines. The Society for Culture and the 
Science of Judaism in Berlin (founded 1819) started a 
journal, with L. Zunz as editor. Though it only lived 
during the years 1822 and 1823, it was the forerunner 
and the model for many of its kind that followed after. 
In 1835 appeared Geiger's Scientific Journal for Jewish 
Theology, and in 1837 a regular weekly was established by 
L. Philippson, the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums. 
Around these and other journals which quickly sprang 
up there gathered a coterie of historians, philologists, 
and students of literature which in the fifty years be- 
tween 1830 and 1880 has built up a science which has 
extended its investigations into every corner of Jewish 
life in the past, and has followed to their sources the 
various lines of development which have appeared from 
time to time. A full estimate of what has been done 
will be apparent only when the great Jewish Encyclo- 
paedia will be ready which is now in course of publica- 
tion in New York. Zunz, Geiger, Krochmal, Rapoport, 
Frankel, Low, Steinschneider, Graetz, Luzzatto, and 
Reggio are only a few of the names of those who gave 
up their lives to this work. Most of the early labor 
of these men was not dry -as -dust investigation pure 
and simple, but was intended to have a bearing upon 
the actual life, upon the burning questions which were 
then agitating Jewish thought. This is clearly seen 
in the journal of which Zunz was editor, and in his 
Gottesdienstliche Vortraege, the basis of nearly all the 
work done after him, but which was evidently written 

520 



RELIGION 

to give the history of preaching in the synagogue in 
order to justify the shortening of the ritual and the in- 
troduction of the German sermon. 

The second attempt was to found or create some central 
body which would remove the purely personal element 
out of the Reform movement. In 1837 Geiger had called 
his friends to a conference at Wiesbaden for the purpose 
of formulating what they considered to be the essence 
of Judaism. In 1844 a second such rabbinical conference 
was held in Brunswick, largely at the suggestion of L. 
Philippson. Similar conferences were held at Frankfort 
in 1845, and at Breslau in 1846; for in the mean time 
the Reform Genossenschaft had been created at Berlin, 
which went beyond all previous attempts and demanded 
some positive statement of the theological position which 
it and its friends occupied. The Frankfort assembly 
not proving satisfactory, the Berlin society went ahead 
to establish its own synagogue ; added a Sunday service 
(which in a short while became the only service), and 
under the guidance of S. Holdheim definitely broke 
with traditional Judaism, removing nearly all the Hebrew 
from its service, abbreviating the prayer-book still further, 
and diminishing the number of observances. In Europe 
this Reform synagogue in Berlin has gone to the furthest 
extreme ; and though it has in a measure kept its members 
within the pale of Judaism, it has neither been a great 
power nor has it found imitators. The hope was gener- 
ally expressed that a more general synod would be held, 
to which the previous conferences were looked upon as 
simply preparatory. The year 1848, however, put a 
stop to all normal development; and it was only after 
a number of years that the question was again taken up. 
In 1869 a synod was, indeed, held at Leipsic, attended 
by eighty-one members; and in 1871 at Augsburg, at- 
tended by fifty-two, both under the presidency of Prof. 
M. Lazarus. These synods dealt, in a spirit of moderate 

521 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

reform, with questions relating to the ritual, synagogue 
observance, the admission of proselytes, etc. The gen- 
eral stand there taken would to-day be looked upon as 
conservative; dogmatic questions were hardly touched 
upon excepting so far as they recognized the principle 
of development in Judaism both as a religious belief 
and as a form of religious exercise. It was fondly hoped 
that these synods would become a court, which would 
define and regulate whatever questions might arise. 
But it was not to be. The synod represented only a 
part of the Jewish world even in Germany. Not only 
did the large body of the Orthodox stand aside, but even 
the so-called Conservatives left the conferences, as they 
could not agree with some of the resolutions accepted 
there. In addition to this, the Franco-Prussian war 
diverted the attention of all German citizens; and ten 
years later the anti-Semitic movement succeeded in 
driving the Jew back into himself. Jewish religious 
life in Germany has therefore remained stationary since 
that time, the Orthodox and Conservative parties being 
largely in the ascendant, leaving to another land — 
America — the task of carrying further the work which 
it had commenced. Yet, in spite of this arrested devel- 
opment, the Reform movement has had a great in- 
fluence also upon Orthodox Jews in Germany. It pro- 
duced the so-called historical school, which has the Bres- 
lau Theological Seminary for its centre; and it called 
forth by way of opposition the neo-orthodoxy of S. R. 
Hirsch, of Frankfort, which seeks rather to understand 
the depths of the law than simply to follow it in com- 
pliant obedience. 

The aesthetic movement of the earlier period has also 
left its traces, and especially in the Conservative con- 
gregation has succeeded in introducing a service more 
in consonance with our modern ideas of worship. 

In 1840, under the influence of the movement in Ger- 

522 



RELIGION 

many, the attempt was made to introduce a certain re- 
form in the service of some of the London synagogues. 
The measure demanded was exceedingly small — the 
shortening of a few prayers and the omission of others, 
which were not supposed to be in consonance with present 
ideas. The Orthodox party did not, however, see its 
way to grant these requests ; and, when the Reformers 
protested, established their own synagogue, and issued 
their own prayer-book, they were immediately placed 
under the bann both by the Sefardim and the Ashkena- 
zim. This congregation has not been of much impor- 
tance, and since its inception has made no further 
changes. Compared with the Reform in America, the 
English movement would still be classed as thoroughly 
conservative. 

It was in the United States that the Reform move- 
ment developed its full capacity and bore its most perfect 
fruit. In a new land, which was untrammelled by tradi- 
tions of the past, and where the congregational system 
became the basis of Jewish communal life, the ideas 
which the German Reformers had sown had a most 
fruitful ground in which to grow. It cannot be said 
that the Reform movement here was actually started 
by the Germans, for already, in 1825, one of the congre- 
gations in Charleston, South Carolina, made up almost 
entirely of Sefardic Jews, had developed " The Reformed 
Society of Israelites " ; and the formation of the society 
seems to have been due, not only to the demand for an 
aesthetic service, but to an attempt to formulate a creed 
which should omit all reference to the coming of the 
Messiah, the return to Palestine, and the bodily resurrec- 
tion. This attempt at formulating a Theistic Church, 
however, was unsuccessful; and it was not until the 
advent from Germany in the 50's and 6o's of rabbis who 
had been influenced by the movement in Germany that 
reform commenced to make itself felt here. Merzbacher 

523 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

in New York, Isaac M. Wise in Albany and Cincinnati, 
S. Hirsch in Philadelphia, David Einhorn in Baltimore, 
are only a few of the names of those who fought in the 
thick of the fight. About the year 1843 the first real 
Reform congregations were established, the Temple 
Emanu-el in New York and Har Sinai in Baltimore. 
It cannot be my purpose here to trace the history of the 
movement in this country ; suffice it to say that the un- 
trammelled freedom which existed here very soon played 
havoc with most of the institutions of the Jewish religion. 
Each congregation and each minister being a law to 
itself, shortened the service, excised prayers, and did 
away with observances as it thought best. Not that 
the leaders did not try, from time to time, to regulate the 
measure of reform to be introduced, and to evolve a plat- 
form upon which the movement should stand. Rabbin- 
ical conferences were held for that purpose in Cleve- 
land (1856), Philadelphia (1869), Cincinnati (1871), and 
Pittsburg (1885). While in the earlier conferences the 
attempt was made to find some authoritative statement 
upon which all parties could agree, in the subsequent 
ones the attempt was given up. They became more and 
more meeting - places simply for the advanced Reform 
wing of the Jewish Church. The position of this wing 
of the Reformed synagogue may best be seen in the 
declaration of principles which was published by the 
Pittsburg conference. It declared that Judaism presents 
the highest conception of the God idea; that the Bible 
contains the record of the consecration of the Jewish 
people; that it is a potent instrument of religious and 
moral instruction ; that it reveals, however, the primitive 
ideas of its own age ; that its moral laws only are binding ; 
and that all ceremonies therein ordained which are not 
adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization 
are to be rejected; that all Mosaic and rabbinical laws 
regulating diet, priestly functions and dress, are foreign 

524 



RELIGION 

to our present mental state ; that the Jews are no longer 
a nation, and therefore do not expect a return to Palestine ; 
that Judaism is a progressive religion, always striving 
to be in accord with the postulates of reason; that the 
belief in bodily resurrection, in the existence of a hell 
and a paradise, are to be rejected ; and that it is the duty 
of Jews to participate in the great task of modern times 
to solve on the basis of justice and righteousness the 
problems presented by the transitions and evils of the 
present organization of society. Such a platform as 
this could not fail to arouse intense opposition on the 
part of the Orthodox Jews, and to lose for the conference 
even some of its more conservative adherents. As in 
Charleston, in 1825, a platform of Theism was here 
postulated, which was bereft of all distinctively Jewish 
characteristics, and which practically meant a break- 
ing away from historic Judaism. This position of the 
advanced Reformers is also manifested in the stand 
which they have taken in regard to the necessity of the 
Abrahamic covenant. At a meeting of the Central 
Conference of American (Reformed) Rabbis, held at 
Baltimore in 1881, a resolution was passed to the effect 
that no initiatory rite or ceremony was necessary in the 
case of one desiring to enter the Covenant of Israel, and 
that such a one had merely to declare his or her inten- 
tion to worship the one sole and eternal God, to be con- 
scientiously governed in life by God's laws, and to adhere 
to the sacred cause and mission of Israel as marked out 
in Holy Writ. 

The service in Reform synagogues in the United 
States has kept pace with this development of doctrine, 
or rather with this sloughing- off of so much that is dis- 
tinctively Jewish. The observance of the second-day fes- 
tivals has been entirely abolished, as well as the separa- 
tion of the sexes and the covering of the head in prayer. 
The ritual has been gradually shortened, the ancient 

525 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

language of prayer (Hebrew) has been pushed further 
and further into the background, so that in some con- 
gregations the service is altogether English; and in a 
few congregations an additional service on Sunday, 
intended for those who cannot attend upon the regular 
Sabbath - day, has been introduced. Only one con- 
gregation, Sinai in Chicago, has followed the old Berlin 
Reform synagogue and has entirely abolished the service 
on Friday night and Saturday morning. But what- 
ever criticism one might like to offer on the Reform move- 
ment in the United States, it deserves great praise for 
the serious attempt it has made to understand its own 
position and to square its observance with that position. 
It has also been most active in its modern institutional 
development. It has certainly beautified and spiritual- 
ized the synagogue service; it has founded a Union of 
American Hebrew Congregations, and a seminary (Hebrew 
Union College in Cincinnati). It has published a Union 
Prayer-book and a Union Hymn-book, and has given 
great care to the development of the Confirmation and 
the bettering of the Sunday-school. It has tried to make 
the synagogue a centre for the religious and spiritual 
development of its members; and it cannot be denied 
that the very large mass of educated Jews in this country, 
in so far as they have any affiliation with the synagogue, 
belong to the Reform wing. But at the same time, it 
must not be forgotten that there is a very large body of 
Orthodox and Conservative Jews, whose number has 
been greatly increased during the last twenty years 
through the influx of Russian, Galician, and Roumanian 
Jews. It would be outside of my province were I to 
attempt to criticise either the work or the results of Re- 
form Judaism in this country. But it is a question in 
the minds even of some of the leading Reformers them- 
selves how far success has been attained in developing 
the religious sentiment of their people in the direction 

526 



RELIGION 

of a pure Theism uncolored by any Jewish, or, as they 
call it, Oriental observances. They themselves confess 
that the Sunday-service movement has not developed 
as they had hoped it would, and a number of them feel 
that in weakening the hold which specific Jewish ob- 
servances have always had on the Jewish people, they 
are doing away with one of the most powerful incentives 
to the rekindling of the religious flame among the Re- 
formed Jews. 

Reform Judaism without some centrifugal force is 
bound to continue on the road it has once taken. The 
logical outcome of the principles formulated at the Pitts- 
burg conference is a gradual development into an ethical 
Theism without any distinctive Jewish coloring. The 
leader of advanced Reform Judaism in this country has 
recently said that Judaism must be recast along the 
lines of a universal ethical religion; that then all dis- 
tinctive Jewish elements of the synagogue symbolism 
will pass away, and that such a denationalized Jewish 
temple will seek a closer alliance with Unitarianism 
and Theism, and with them, perhaps in a few decades, 
will form a new Church and a new religion for united 
humanity. That such a tendency is inherent in Reform 
Judaism is seen also in the formation of the Society of 
Ethical Culture in New York. The leader of this move- 
ment is the son of a former prominent rabbi of the lead- 
ing Reform congregation in this country. In seeking to 
bring out the underlying ethical principles of Judaism, 
he has gone entirely outside the pale of the ancient faith ; 
and the movement would not concern us here were it 
not that nearly all the members (at least of the parent 
society in New York) are Jews, whose evident desire it 
is not to be recognized as such, at least so far as religious 
ceremonies and social affiliations are concerned. The 
society does not even bear the name Jewish, but with a 
certain leaning towards liberal Christianity tries to find 

527 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

a basis for the morality and ethics of the old synagogue 
outside the sphere of supernatural religion. While the 
Ethical Culture Society has been quite a power in certain 
lines of charitable and educational work, it may reason- 
ably be questioned whether it has any future as a form 
of Church organization. The inborn longing of man 
for some hold upon things which are supernatural will 
lead many of its members to seek satisfaction elsewhere. 
That they will seek it in the Jewish synagogue is hard- 
ly probable, seeing how the racial and other ties have 
been broken or at least greatly loosened. They or their 
children will glide rather into some form of the dominant 
Church, possibly, in the swinging of the pendulum, into 
some orthodox form of that Church. I cannot help 
quoting the words of an intelligent outside observer 
of the Jewish question, the Right Hon. James Bryce, 
M. P. : " If Judaism becomes merely Theism, there will 
be little to distinguish its professors from the persons, 
now pretty numerous, who, while Christian in name, sit 
loose to Christian doctrine. The children of Jewish 
theists will be almost as apt as the children of other 
theists to be caught up by the movement which carries 
the sons and daughters of evangelical Anglicans and 
of Nonconformists towards, or all the way to, the Church 
of Rome." 

Where, then, is this centrifugal force to be found, 
which will hold together the various elements in Israel, 
no matter what their theological opinions may be? 

ANTI-SEMITISM 

Before attempting to answer this question, a word 
must be said in regard to the anti-Semitic movement, 
the recrudescence of which has so profoundly affected 
the Jewish people during the last twenty years of the 
nineteenth century. A word only, because the facts 

528 



RELIGION 

are of too recent date to need a detailed statement here. 
The great master-mind, Zunz, writing in Germany in 
1832, believed that persecution for religious belief could 
not withstand the onslaughts of the new era. Theodore 
Reinach, some fifty years later, asserted that anti-Semi- 
tism was impossible in France. How sadly has a dementi 
been given to the hopes thus expressed, especially in 
these two countries! 

I pass over the outbreaks against the Jews during 
the early years of the nineteenth century, even the 
Damascus blood-accusation in 1840, and the forcible 
baptism of little Edgar Mortara in 1858 ; they were be- 
lieved to belong to the old order of things, with which 
the new, at least in that direction, had nothing in common. 
I confine myself simply to the modern form of anti- 
Judaism, which has been dignified with the name of 
anti-Semitism. It is hard for a Jew to speak of these 
things with composure or with the judicial mind of a 
mere chronicler of events. Neither emancipation from 
without nor Reform from within has been able to stay 
the hand of the destroyer of Israel's peace. It has been 
contended that in most countries the Jews were not 
ready to be emancipated; that in some the non- Jewish 
population was not sufficiently advanced to make emanci- 
pation effective. The first may be true in regard to the 
Algerian Jews; the second, in regard to those in Rou- 
mania; but it is not true of the other nations on the 
European continent. Starting in Germany, perhaps 
as a political move on the part of Bismarck, it spread 
into Russia, Galicia, Austria, Roumania, and France. 
In most of these countries it not only found expression 
in the exclusion of the Jews from all social intercourse 
with their fellows, but in Russia produced the riots of 
1881 and 1882; in Austria and Bohemia the turbulent 
scene in the Reichstag, and even the pillaging of 
Jewish houses and Jewish synagogues; in Roumania 
2L 529 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

it received the active support of the government and 
reduced the Jews there to practical penury; while in 
France it showed itself in accusations against the Jews 
which for barbarity could match any that were brought 
against them in the Middle Ages. The charges against 
the Jews are varied in their character. In Germany 
they have been blamed for exploiting the agricultural 
class and for serving the interests of the Liberal party, 
forgetting that Leo and Stahl, the founders of the Ortho- 
dox party in Prussia, were themselves Jews, and that 
Disraeli in England was born of the same race. The 
most foolish accusations on almost every conceivable 
subject have been lodged against them by such men as 
Ahlwart, Stocker, Lueger, and Drumont ; and in late years 
the old and foolish charge that the Jews use the blood 
of Christian children in the making of Passover bread 
has been revived, in order to infuriate the populace ; de- 
spite the fact that popes, ecclesiastics, and hosts of Chris- 
tian professors have declared the accusation to be pure- 
ly imaginary and malignant. The false charge that 
a Jewish officer in France had betrayed secrets of his 
government was sufficient to unloosen the most savage 
attacks upon the Jews which the modern world has 
seen. 

The fact which stands out in the whole agitation is 
not that the charges have been made, in most cases by 
men who sought in some way or other to fish in troubled 
waters, but that these charges find a ready echo and a 
ready response among the people at large. It empha- 
sizes so clearly that the Jews are a defenceless people, 
with no means of effectually warding off attacks; and 
though in Germany and Austria societies of Christians 
have been formed for the purpose of combating anti- 
Semitism, there is no power which can effectually enter 
the lists in their behalf. This was notably seen in the 
great London -demonstration of 1882, when the petition 

530 



RELIGION 

signed by the foremost members of Church and state 
never even reached the Czar, to whom it was ad- 
dressed. 

Among the few bright spots on the world's chart are 
those countries inhabited by the Anglo - Saxon race. 
Anti-Semitism is unknown in England (though the 
attempt has been made to fix the blame for the Boer war 
on the Jews) ; and the institutions of the United States 
have up till now prevented the entrance here of the disease, 
though in the mild form of social anti-Semitism which 
debars Jewish children from private schools and Jewish 
people from clubs and summer hotels, it has insinuated 
itself into some of the Eastern cities, notably into New 
York. 

ZIONISM 

There can be no doubt that next to the Reform move- 
ment the profoundest modification of the forces within 
Judaism has come about during the last years of the 
century through the rise and progress of the Zionist 
movement. It has been said by some that Zionism is 
the expression of Jewish pessimism, by others that it 
is the highest form of Jewish optimism. I venture to 
say that it is both. The emancipation of the Jews has 
not been able to do away with anti-Semitism; history 
has repeated itself time and time again. When the 
Jews of a country were few in number and of little in- 
fluence, they led a tolerably secure existence; but as 
soon as their number increased and their influence com- 
menced to be felt, anti-Semitism was the effective weapon 
in the hands of their opponents. In so far, then, as 
Zionism takes account of this fact, it is pessimistic ; for 
conditions in the future will hardly differ from those 
in the past. It sees the Wandering Jew of history con- 
tinuing still his dreary march through the ages, never at 
rest and never able to effect a quiet and even develop- 

531 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ment of his own forces. It explains this phenomenon 
from the fact that Israel has in all the changed circum- 
stances striven to maintain its racial identity, and as 
this racial identity has a religious side as well, that the 
two combined may well be called a separate national 
existence; that a people holding tenaciously to this 
separate existence, but having no home of its own, must 
become, when occasion demands, the scape-goat and 
the play-ball of other forces. It recognizes anti-Semi- 
tism as continually existent, and in so far the opponents 
of Zionism may be right in saying that its rise is the 
result of the an ti -Jewish movement. It is the Jewish 
answer from the Jewish point of view. On the other 
hand, Zionism is optimistic in believing that real help 
for the Jews can only come from within their own body ; 
and that the Jewish question will only be solved when 
the Jews return to that point in their history whence they 
set out on their wanderings, and again found a per- 
manent home to which all the persecuted can flee and 
from which a light will go forth to every nook and corner 
of Jewry. It does not hope that all Jews will return to 
Palestine, but it believes that only in a national cen- 
tre can the centrifugal force be found which will hold 
the Jews together in the various countries of their so- 
journ. 

When Theodore Herzl, a litterateur in Vienna, publish- 
ed in 1897 his pamphlet on the Jewish state, he little 
imagined that it would call forth an echo in every country 
in which the Jews were scattered. He was not the first 
to attempt this solution of the problem. Far-seeing 
Russian Jews before him had, many years previous to 
that, propounded this method of dealing with the ques- 
tion, and it had been practically the assumption upon 
which the Judaism of the past had been built up. Reform 
Judaism, in relinquishing the hope of a return, and in 
cutting out from the prayer-book all mention of Palestine 

532 



RELIGION 

and the restoration, broke one of the strongest links 
which bound the Judaism of to-day with that of the 
past, and cast aside a great ideal, the realization of 
which had been a light to the feet of the Jews since the 
destruction of the Temple. The idea of a "Mission" 
has taken its place, the preaching of a pure Mono- 
theism. 

The Zionist congresses (which have now been held 
during four successive years) have found the platform, 
so often sought for in vain during the nineteenth cen- 
tury, upon which all Jews, regardless of theological opin- 
ions and of economic theories, can stand. They rep- 
resent the old unity of Israel; for Orthodox, Conserva- 
tive, Reform, and even the purely racial Jew are to be 
found there as well as in the Zionist societies which 
have grown up in every Jewish community, whether in 
Europe or in Africa, in North or in South America, 
even in the distant Philippines. The Orthodox Jew 
must be, by his very profession, a Zionist; but he often 
doubts whether the plan as formulated by Dr. Herzl is 
feasible, and holds himself aloof, waiting for the realiza- 
tion of his hopes at the hands of others, or for some 
supernatural sign of divine assistance. The very fact 
that the Jewish opponents of Zionism (and they are the 
only opponents it has) come from various parts of the 
Jewish camp is in itself a proof of the above statement. 
The Orthodox complain that some of the leaders of the 
movement are not sufficiently Jewish ; the Reform, that 
some are too Jewish. That this opposition is exceed- 
ingly strong cannot be denied. The demand made that 
the Jew should assert himself first and foremost as a 
Jew has been distasteful to many who were soaring in 
the mystic hazes of Universalism, or who had hoped to 
get out of Judaism as it were by the back door, without 
being seen by the world at large. 

But even in those circles which do not formally af- 

533 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

filiate with Zionism, or who at times even oppose it, 
there has of late years been a very strong revival of 
Jewish feeling and a movement towards a stronger ex- 
pression of that feeling. Germany is honeycombed 
with societies for the study of Jewish literature; the 
Hebrew language has been revived, notably in Russia, 
not only as a form of literary expression, but also as a 
vehicle of social intercourse; France has its Society of 
Jewish Studies ; America and England have their Jew- 
ish Historical Societies, and their Jewish Chautauqua 
movements; Jewish national societies have sprung up 
among the students of German and Austrian universi- 
ties — all influences tending in this one direction. 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

As we look ahead into the century which is now open- 
ing and cast our eye over the forces which the Jews will 
bring into its life, we can easily see that these forces 
tend in various directions. 

We have first the Orthodox wing of the Jewish Church, 
which stands upon the broad basis of what the past 
has evolved. It holds firmly to the inspiration of the 
biblical word and the divine character of its interpreta- 
tion as handed down in the oral law ; it tries to regulate 
its life by Talmudic ordinances as evolved in the latest 
law books, and is unwilling to make any but aesthetic 
concessions to changed circumstances, believing that we 
must adhere strictly to all the time -honored ceremo- 
nies of the synagogue. At its side stand the Conservatives, 
who are willing to make some concession to present de- 
mands, but believe that these concessions should be 
most sparingly and grudgingly made, and who theolog- 
ically, at least in theory, occupy the same position as 
do the Orthodox. It is safe to say that the greater num- 
ber of Jews in the Western European states belong to 

534 



RELIGION 

this wing of the synagogue. Between the Conservatives 
and the Ethical Culturists stands the Reform party, 
more numerous in the United States than anywhere else, 
whose position it is hard to define and in whose midst 
there are various shades of opinion and of practice. All 
the Reformers have openly or tacitly broken with Tal- 
mudic Judaism — the more conservative among them 
seem to believe that a new Judaism can be built up upon 
the Bible, only without its traditional interpretation; 
while the advanced body do not even look upon the Bible 
as binding, but merely as a starting-point for a further 
development. They do not consider the Bible as in- 
spired in the old accepted sense of the term ; they welcome 
biblical criticism as an aid to the understanding of the 
early history of their people; they do not believe in the 
special election of Israel, and have a well-defined ab- 
horrence of anything like a creed. They are practically 
Theists with a Jewish racial coloring. Nor do they 
believe in the coming of a personal Messiah; rather, 
in the advent of a Messianic time in which righteousness 
and good-will shall prevail and all the earth acknowl- 
edge the one God. To bring about this time is, accord- 
ing to them, the Mission of the Jew — a phrase very 
current in these latter days, the fulfilling of which has 
been made the pretext for dejudaizing Judaism, so as 
to make it acceptable to non-Jews. Mr. Oswald John 
Simon, of London, has even gone further. He believes 
that if the Reform party is earnest in its pretensions, 
it ought — as it did once before in its history — to become 
an active missionary power. A few years ago he at- 
tempted to found a Jewish Theistic Church, which 
should in no way be colored by Jewish ceremonial. 
The movement was, of course, a failure. The original 
attempt, some nineteen hundred years ago, led to 
the founding of the Christian Church, and Jews them- 
selves have suffered too much from missionaries of 

535 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

other faiths to take to this work with pleasure. But, 
in addition to these, there is also a large body of Jews 
whose connection with the synagogue is purely nomi- 
nal, and who know of it only when they need the 
services of its sanction or the respectability of its con- 
nections. The hold which the Jewish Church has upon 
them is small indeed, and many of them hope, in the 
twentieth century, to doff their Jewish gaberdine. The 
open or concealed pressure of anti - Semitism (particu- 
larly on the continent of Europe) which makes it im- 
possible for the Jew as such to attain to social distinc- 
tion or political position will drive most of these into the 
arms of the dominant Church of the country in which 
they live. In a remarkable article published in the 
Deutsche Jahrbiicher of October, 1900, a writer who uses 
the nom de plume of Benedictus Levita openly urges 
those of his fellow- Jews who have become estranged from 
the synagogue to have their children baptized, in order 
that they may not suffer as their parents have, but may 
become really believing Christians, since their affilia- 
tion with the Christian Church has become necessary in 
the modern Christian state. Another German Jew at 
about the same time advises his brethren to declare 
themselves "Confessionslos," so as to become lost, not 
in Christianity, but in "Deutschtum." A similar re- 
quest was made to the Jews of Roumania, in 1900, by 
the historian Xenopol of Bucharest. There is little 
fear that this advice of wholesale apostasy will find 
many adherents, notwithstanding the fact that an un- 
usually large number of conversions have taken place 
in Germany and Austria, due wholly to pressure from 
without rather than to conviction from within. The 
defection even of comparatively large numbers can, 
however, hardly affect the Jewish cause as a whole; 
for these numbers living on the periphery, or even beyond 
it, have been of little service to the Jewish cause ; and all 

536 



RELIGION 

through the ages Jews have made just such contri- 
butions as these to the general society in which they 
lived. 

There can be no doubt that Zionism is a strong protest 
against these weaklings, and that the coming century 
will witness the Jews divided into two camps not neces- 
sarily hostile to each other, the Zionists and the Non- 
Zionists — those who plead for a conservation of the 
old energy and the old ideals, and those who look for- 
ward to the disintegration of Judaism and its gradual 
passing away into other forces. That Judaism can 
only conserve its force if that force is attached to a racial 
and national basis is seen clearly in the fact that just 
those Jews in Germany who have been most loudly 
clamorous against the Zionists propose to have now 
what they call a German "Judentag," which can cer- 
tainly mean nothing unless it become Zionist in its 
tendency. 

Confident in this hope, we of the House of Israel look 
calmly into the future. The message of the prophet 
of old is full of meaning for us : " Thus saith the Lord 
God: behold I, even I, will both search my sheep and 
seek them out, as a shepherd seeketh out his flock in 
the day that he is among his flock which is scattered, 
and I will deliver them out of all places where they have 
been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. " We can echo 
the sentiments expressed by a Christian Zionist, George 
Eliot, many years ago: "Revive the organic centre; let 
the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form 
of its religion be an outward reality. Looking towards 
a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of 
the earth may share the dignity of a national life which 
has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West 
— which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so 
that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and 
understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living 

537 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, 
and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of 
the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which 
widen feeling and make all knowledge alive as the 
young offspring of beloved memories." 

Richard J. H. Gottheil. 



FREE-THOUGHT 

'"THE history of religion during the past century may 
* be described as the sequel of that dissolution of the 
mediaeval faith which commenced at the Reformation. 
The vast process of disintegration proceeds by degrees, 
is varied by reactionary effort, and gives birth to new 
theories in its course. In our day the completion of the 
process and a new departure seem to be at hand. A 
sharp line cannot be drawn at the beginning of the last 
century, the leaders of religious thought in the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries having been to a great 
extent the leaders, and their works the text-books, of the 
nineteenth. 

At the Reformation Protestantism threw off the yoke of 
Pope and priest, priestly control over conscience through 
the confessional, priestly absolution for sin, and belief 
in the magical power of the priest as consecrator of the 
Host, besides the worship of the Virgin and the saints, 
purgatory, relics, pilgrimages, and other incidents of the 
mediaeval system. Ostensibly, Protestantism was found- 
ed on freedom of conscience and the right of private 
judgment. In reality, it retained Church authority over 
conscience in the shape of dogmatic creeds and ordination 
tests. It besides enforced belief in the plenary inspira- 
tion of the Bible, by which the exercise of private judg- 
ment was narrowly confined. Not for some time did it 
even renounce persecution. In grimly Calvinistic Scot- 
land a boy was hanged for impugning the doctrine of 
the Trinity at the end of the seventeenth century. The 

539 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Anglican Church, suspended by the will of the Tudor 
sovereigns between Catholicism and Protestantism, os- 
cillated from side to side, producing by one of its oscil- 
lations the great civil war. It burned heretics in the 
reign of James I. All the Protestant Churches except 
the Baptists, who at first were objects of persecution, 
fell under the dominion of the state, which repaid them 
for their submission and support by endowments, tem- 
poral privileges, and persecution of dissent. 

Though Protestantism produced a multitude of sects, 
especially in England at the time of the Commonwealth, 
hardly any of them were free-thinking or sceptical ; those 
of any importance, at all events, were in some sense 
dogmatic and were anchored to the inspiration of the 
Bible. Nor is it easy to convict Hobbes, bugbear of the 
orthodox as he was, of scepticism or even of heterodoxy. 
The expression of heterodox opinions, indeed, would 
have been a violation of his own principle, which makes 
religion absolutely an affair of the state, to be regulated 
by a despotic government, and confines liberty to the 
recesses of thought. It is true that in making religion 
a political institution, variable at a despot's will, he 
covertly denied that it was divine. 

Under the Restoration religious thought and con- 
troversy slept. The nation was weaiy of those subjects. 
The liberty for which men then struggled was political, 
though with political liberty was bound up religious 
toleration, which achieved a partial triumph under 
William III. 

The Church of Rome, to meet the storm, reorganized 
herself at the Council of Trent on lines practically traced 
for her by the Jesuit. A comparison of Suarez with 
Thomas Aquinas shows the change which took place in 
spirit as plainly as a comparison of the Jesuit's mere- 
tricious fane with the Gothic churches shows the change 
in religious taste. Papal autocracy was strengthened 

540 



RELIGION 

at the expense of the episcopate, and furnished at once 
with a guard and a propagandist machinery of extraor- 
dinary power in the Order of Loyola. That the plenary 
inspiration of the Bible in the Vulgate version, and in- 
cluding the Apocrypha, should be reaffirmed was a 
secondary matter, inasmuch as the Church of Rome holds 
that it is not she who derives her credentials from Script- 
ure, but Scripture which depends for the attestation of 
its authority upon her. She now allied herself more 
closely than before with the Catholic kings, with Philip 
II., and afterwards with Louis XIV., who paid her for 
her support of political absolutism by sanguinary persecu- 
tion of heretics. She hereby parted with her Hildebrandic 
supremacy over the powers of the world, though she 
did not, like the Anglican Church, recognize the divine 
right of kings. The liberal and peace -making move- 
ments which had been set on foot, or were afterwards set 
on foot, within her pale, such as the Oratory of Divine 
Love, which held justification by faith and wished to 
compromise with the Protestants, were effectually put 
down. Jansenism, when it appeared, with its half- 
Calvinistic theory of Grace, shared the same fate. Gal- 
licanism afterwards, having nationality to back it, was 
more successful. But it brought no freedom of con- 
science ; it was merely a repartition of the despotic power 
over conscience between the King and the Pope. 

In Spain, and for the most part in Italy, Rome, by the 
aid of the Jesuit and the Inquisition, completely suc- 
ceeded in killing free-thought. In France, where there 
was no Inquisition, her triumph was not so complete. 
She succeeded only in driving scepticism into disguise 
and subterfuge. The Commonwealth of Holland did 
France and the world in general the immense service of 
affording a printing house for free -thought which was 
on the confines of France, but be3 T ond the reach of the 
French government. Descartes, without directly as- 

541 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

sailing the faith of the Church, planted in her face the 
standard of thorough-going reason and entitled himself 
to a place in the Index. Growing sensuality and love 
of pleasure brought with them laxity of belief and 
impatience of priestly control. The authority of the 
clergy was impaired by their scandalous wealth and 
vice, which at the same time enhanced the odium of 
their persecuting t3 T ranny. At last came Voltaire, 
Diderot, the Encyclopaedia, and Rousseau. With lit- 
erary cleverness unmatched and an incomparable ge- 
nius for subtle attack, combined with a winning philan- 
thropy, Voltaire converted and drew into the work of 
demolition, to them suicidal, the thrones of Louis XV., 
or rather of the Pompadour, of Catherine, and Frederick. 
The influence extended even to Spain, where Aranda, 
and to Portugal, where Pombal reigned. The Pope 
was constrained to dissolve the Order of Jesus. As 
Voltaire demolished in the name of Reason, Rousseau 
demolished in the name of Nature, taking an artificial 
society by storm. Helvetius went to the length of ex- 
treme materialism ; but Voltaire, the master-spirit of the 
movement, remained a theist, and Rousseau was even 
for compulsory theism as the foundation of the state. 
The Revolution also, when it came, though violently 
and profanely anti-Christian, was in the main theist, 
and in the midst of the Terror held its Feast of the Su- 
preme Being, with Robespierre for high priest. Atheism, 
in the persons of Chaumette and Anacharsis Clootz, 
went to the guillotine. 

One hardly knows what to say about the Last Will and 
Testament of Jean Meslier, the priest who after thirty 
years' sen-ice as a country cure bequeathed to his parish- 
ioners a profession of atheism. The work appears to 
have passed through the hands of Voltaire. It urges 
the arguments against natural theology in a very forcible 
as well as thorough-going way. But it seems, when it 

542 



RELIGION 

appeared, to have made little impression and can be 
mentioned historically only as an indication of the mask- 
ed ferment of the time. 

England had a series of deists, Toland, Tindal, Col- 
lins, Chubb, and the rest, not men of much mark, though 
seekers of truth after their measure and in their day. 
The ecclesiastical polity of England was comparatively 
mild, and there was nothing to provoke indignant re- 
sistance to clerical tyranny like that which was provoked 
by the cases of Calas and LaBarre. Shaftesbury, a 
deist of a higher stamp, was, with his "moral taste," a 
philosopher for men of taste, and could little stir the 
common world. In defence of orthodoxy came forth 
Bishop Butler, with a work which will be memorable 
forever as a model of earnest and solemn inquiry into 
the deepest questions, though its fundamental assump- 
tion is unwarrantable, since we should expect the diffi- 
culties of natural theology not to be reproduced but to be 
dispelled by revelation. Butler's tone in discussion was 
an effective rebuke to those who had treated Christianity 
with levity as an obsolete interference with the pleasures 
of the world. His profound analysis of the moral nature 
of man in like manner rebuked the shallow and cynical 
theories which resolved everything into self-love; though 
here again his assumption of the authority of conscience 
as a divinely implanted monitor has by modern inves- 
tigation been disallowed. Butler, however, with all his 
piety and his orthodox conclusions, must essentially be 
reckoned among rationalists. He frankly admits that 
the use of our reason is the only means we have of arriv- 
ing at truth, never appealing from it to Church authority. 
He who recognizes reason as supreme must be deemed 
rationalist, let his own reason lead him or mislead him 
as it may. This is the vital line of cleavage which runs 
through the whole religious history and divides the re- 
ligious world at the present day. 

543 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Butler had a popular shield-bearer in Paley, an ex- 
tremely acute and effective though not profound writer. 
Paley's supposed proof of the existence of an intelligent 
Creator from the design visible in creation told greatly 
at the time and long continued to tell; though we now 
see that the universe, unlike the watch, presents terrible 
proofs of undesign as well as apparent proofs of design ; 
not to mention that in the case of the universe, though 
adaptation is visible, the aim is not revealed. Paley's 
Horae Paulinae, however, is about the only piece of 
historical apologetics which has in any degree survived 
the destructive influence of modern criticism. 

Warburton hardly calls for mention. In his Divine 
Legation he is right enough in saying that Moses did 
not teach the immortality of the soul; but the notion 
that the Mosaic dispensation must have had divine sup- 
port because it could afford to dispense with that doc- 
trine would now only provoke a smile. 

Among literary apologists we can scarcely reckon 
Johnson. Yet he was a living defence, intellectual as 
well as moral, of his religion. That he speculated, we 
cannot doubt, and we know that he was not satisfied 
with the proofs of the immortality of the soul; but he 
suppressed doubt in himself and frowned it down in 
others. He was well justified in treating with contempt 
the posthumous works of Bolingbroke, which have not 
the slightest force or value beyond their literary form. 
Bolingbroke's scepticism, however, had a certain effect 
if it inspired Pope's Universal Prayer. 

In Hume, on the other hand, we have the mightiest 
of all sceptics in the literal sense of the term, inasmuch 
as he was purely a doubter and seems hardly to have 
felt the desire of arriving at any positive result. He 
who has given rise to so much controversy was himself 
uncontroversial. His writings, considered as the vehicle 
of his opinions, are the perfection of literary art. Over 

544 



RELIGION 

common minds the teacher who merely suspends judg- 
ment, seeming not to be in quest of positive truth, can 
never have much influence; but Hume had great influ- 
ence over cultivated men of the world. His argument 
against the credibility of miracles, though it became as 
standard on one side as Paley's apologue of the watch 
upon the other, will hardly bear examination. Assum- 
ing the existence of God and His care for man as His 
work, which Hume does not openly deny, there is no pre- 
sumption against His revelation of Himself in the only 
conceivable way, which is by an interruption of the 
general course of things; there is rather a presumption 
that He would so reveal Himself. Nor can it be main- 
tained that no degree of evidence, say that of a multi- 
tude of scientific men, after providing all possible safe- 
guards against deception, would satisfy us of the fact. 

Gibbon's great work is instinct with the tendency of 
men of the world in the generation of Voltaire, Horace 
Walpole, and Hume. Its spirit is identical with that of 
Hume's philosophy and history. It is of first-rate im- 
portance in the religious controversy as having opened 
the trenches historically against revealed religion in 
undertaking to account for the success of Christianity 
by natural causes. But its cynical treatment of that 
which, on any hypothesis, was the prevailing and forma- 
tive force is unphilosophical and detracts largely from 
the value of the work. He who could imagine that man 
had been happiest in the Roman Empire under the An- 
tonines was an apt partisan of Lord North. Gibbon no 
doubt imagined himself a rich patrician of his golden era. 
Would he have liked to be a Roman slave? Conyers 
Middleton in his Free Inquiry into the ecclesiastical 
miracles glanced at the credibility of the Gospel miracles 
and had thus partly paved the way for Gibbon. 

Among the disintegrating forces may be counted Uni- 
tarianism, which was growing among thinkers, and 
2M 545 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

probably before very long became the mask for pro- 
founder scepticism in Protestant Europe as it did after- 
wards in New England. We find it in England on the 
eve of the French Revolution, combined with science in 
Priestley and with mathematics and philosophy in Price. 

Among the apologetic and defensive forces may be 
numbered the practical vindication of Christianity by a 
certain revival of piety in the Anglican Church which 
produced Wilberforce, Cowper, and the Evangelicals, 
and still more by the religious crusade of John Wesley. 
Wesley's achievements, however, were among the poor 
and illiterate, and were consequently demonstrations of 
the power of Christianity rather than of its truth. His 
Church had the advantage of being born, not like other 
Protestant Churches in doctrinal controversy, but in 
evangelical reaction against the impiety and vice of the 
age. It was, however, not undogmatic; besides what 
might be called the dogma of sudden conversion, it im- 
plicitly accepted not only the literal inspiration of Script- 
ure, but the bulk of the Anglican Articles, to which was 
afterwards added, as an ordination test, general agree- 
ment with the more important of Wesley's sermons. 

The French Revolution brought on a strong reaction 
against the free-thought which had been hideously trav- 
estied in the blasphemous follies, and sullied by the 
crimes, of the Jacobins. In England the Tory mob, with 
true instinct, sacked the library and laboratory of Priest- 
ley. Coleridge, who, like other young men of intellect, 
had hailed the revolutionary dawn, shared the reaction, 
and combining in a curious way German metaphysic 
with English orthodoxy and Establishmentarianism, 
produced a religious system which perhaps entitles him 
to high place among English theologians in the proper 
sense of that term, as denoting a philosophic inquirer 
into the nature of the Deity and the relations between 
the Deity and man; though, as his guiding light was 

546 



RELIGION 

philosophy, not authority or tradition, he may in that 
respect be numbered among the promoters of free-thought 
and of the results to which it was ultimately to lead. 
Such free-thinking as there was naturally took a turn 
answering in violence to the repression. Tom Paine as- 
sailed orthodoxy, not with freedom only, but with enmity 
the most virulent. Though far from an attractive, he 
is by no means an unimportant figure. His criticisms 
of the credibility and moralit}' of Scripture, unlearned 
and coarse as they were, went, not over the heads of the 
people like the high-flying and metaphysical specula- 
tions, but straight to their understandings and their 
hearts. It was difficult for apologetic fencers to parry 
such home thrusts. The same sort of effect has been 
produced by the irreverent frankness of Ingersoll in our 
own day. Shelley rushed from the religion of Eldon 
into what he took for Satanism; though his Satan is 
really the power of good, while the God of Eldon, as 
viewed by him, is the Devil. 

Wrecked, body and soul, by the Thirty Years' war, 
and afterwards stifled under a group of petty despotisms, 
Germany was for a time lost to intellectual progress. 
Her churches and their clergy, the Lutheran clergy at 
least, were in a very low condition. When her intellect 
began to work again, it was in a recluse and highly 
speculative way, the natural consequence of its exclusion 
from politics and other fields of action, together with the 
complete severance of the academical element from the 
people. Hence, from Leibnitz and Lessing onward, 
there was a train of metaphysical philosophies, each 
of them professing to find in our consciousness a key 
to the mystery of Being and an account of God, of His 
counsels, and of the relation between Him and man. In 
derision of such speculations it was said that to the 
French belonged the land, to the English the sea, to the 
Gennans the air. Essentially incapable of verification, 

547 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

these theories went on shifting in nebulous succession 
and, with the exception of that of Kant, may now be said 
to have vanished, leaving scarce a rack behind. Even 
of the great Hegel little remains. Leibnitz, with his 
"best of all possible worlds," hardly survived Candide. 
Still, we must speak with respect and gratitude of these 
efforts of minds, powerful in their way and devoted to 
truth, to solve for us the great mystery. Speculation 
so free could not fail to promote general freedom of 
thought, and the treatment by these thinkers of the 
popular and established religion was as philosophic as 
possible, though, with the exception of Feuerbach, they 
were theists. By Lessing much was done for the recog- 
nition of all religions and the promotion of universal 
toleration. 

Presently, however, came direct criticism of the Bible, 
the way to which, long before, had been lighted by Spi- 
noza. It assumed a strange form in the work of Paulus, 
who applied to the Gospel miracles a solvent something 
like that which Euhemerus had applied to the Pagan 
Pantheon, reducing them to natural occurrences turned 
into miracles by a devout imagination. The miraculous 
fish with the coin in its mouth was a fish which would 
sell for the coin. The miraculous feeding of the five 
thousand was brought within the compass of belief by 
supposing that they were not fasting, but had only gone 
without a regular meal. Christ's walking on the water 
was his holding out a hand from the shore to Peter who 
had leaped into the water to ascertain whether it was 
really Christ that was walking on the shore. 

Far more serious, and a startling blow to orthodoxy, 
was the Life of Jesus, by Strauss, who undertook to 
explain the Gospels on the mythical theory, showing that 
the reputed incidents of the life of Jesus and his miracles 
were mythical fulfilments of Old Testament prophecies 
and aspirations. From this, his first theory, Strauss 

548 



RELIGION 

afterwards partly receded, and in his second Life of 
Jesus, after a critical examination of the authorities, 
he comes to the conclusion that "few great men have 
existed of whose history we have so unsatisfactory a 
knowledge as that we have of Jesus." The figure of 
Socrates, he thinks, though four hundred years older, 
is beyond all comparison more distinct. The momentous 
step, however, had been taken. Jesus had become the 
subject of a biography founded on critical examination 
of the materials, and Strauss is right in saying, as he 
does in his second Life, that when the biography was 
seriously taken up the doom of the theological conception 
was sealed. Lives of Christ, including even the most 
popular of them, however they may pretend and struggle 
to be orthodox, are really, as Strauss says, destructive of 
the theological conception, while they do not help to con- 
firm our loyalty to historical truth. Ferdinand Christian 
Baur and his Tubingen school applied historical criticism 
to the early Christian Church, showing the conflict in it 
of the Pauline with the Petrine tendency, and bringing it 
altogether, as well as its source, within the pale of human 
history. Historical criticism of the Gospels was fur- 
thered by the progress of historical criticism in general, 
shown by such a work as Niebuhr's History of Rome. 
Wolf's treatment of the Homeric poems had already 
marked the birth of a critical spirit, which was aided by 
historical and archaeological discoveries of all kinds, as 
well as by the growing influence of science on the meth- 
ods of religious and anthropological speculation. 

There was an evangelical reaction against rationalism 
in Germany with a train of controversialists and com- 
mentators reputed as orthodox. Yet even in these, more 
or less of a rationalist undertone is perceived. There is a 
tendency more or less apparent to minimize the super- 
natural, to throw the miracles into the background, and 
dwell rather on the spiritual significance of Christ's 

549 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

character and words. This is very conspicuous in Nean- 
der, the head of the line. An orthodox English divine 
such as Mr. Rose might well, after a survey of German 
theolog}? - , make a rather mournful report. 

In Holland, ever the land of free speculation, criticism 
advanced without fear, and at last by the pen of Kuenen 
arraigns the authenticity, antiquity, and authority of 
the historical books of the Old Testament to an extent 
totally subversive of their character as records of a prime- 
val history, much more as organs of a divine revelation. 

German philosophy had mingled with English theology 
through Coleridge. German criticism of the Bible did 
not lag much behind. Milman's History of the Jews, 
dealing with the subject in the spirit of an ordinary history, 
treating patriarchs as Arab sheiks and minimizing 
miracles, gave a serious shock to orthodox sentiment in 
England. Even what was deemed orthodox in Germany 
appeared rationalistic to the Anglican divines. To the 
evangelicals especially, whose leader was Simeon, and 
who occupied many of the fashionable pulpits, anything 
like critical treatment of the sacred history seemed im- 
piety. Yet they, with their inward persuasion of con- 
version and spiritual union with the Saviour, as well 
as the Quaker with his inner light, or the Roman Catholic 
with his implicit faith in the Church, were really beyond 
the critic's reach. 

A long line of British leaders of thought and contro- 
versialists succeeds. Rationalist and heterodox in dif- 
ferent degrees were Thomas Arnold, Frederick Maurice, 
Stanley, Jowett, the writers of Essays and Revieivs, and 
Robertson, of Brighton. Decidedly sceptical were Mat- 
thew Arnold, Carlyle, and James Anthony Froude. 
Reaction on the High Church side found leaders in 
Pusey, Newman, and Hurrell Froude. The evangelical 
pulpit combated at once rationalism and High Church. 
The state Church was awakened from its long torpor, 

550 



RELIGION 

and under the inspiration of its High Church party strove 
to reanimate its Convocation. 

Frederick Maurice impressed more by his character 
than by his writings, which were fatally obscure. He 
was rationalist enough to be deprived of his professor- 
ship in an Anglican college. At the same time he could 
persuade himself that subscription to the Thirty-nine 
Articles was no bondage but a security for free thought. 
To his yoke-fellow, Kingsley, is to be traced " muscular 
Christianity," a rather suspicious adaptation of the 
Sermon on the Mount to our times. But the pair ex- 
ercised more influence as social missionaries, striving, 
in conjunction with Thomas Hughes, to give the labor 
movement a religious turn, than as religious philosophers 
or critics. 

Thomas Arnold, the head-master of Rugby, was a man 
of noble character, powerful mind, and intense earnest- 
ness of purpose. He was a firm believer in Christianity 
as a revealed religion. But he held a most liberal view 
of the Church. He would have admitted to it all the 
sects of dissenters and have identified it as far as possible 
with the nation. His theory of the identity of the Church 
with the nation probably came to him from his passionate 
study of the ancient commonwealths. He forgot that 
the philosophers of Greece, though they might sacrifice 
a cock to iEsculapius, were really outside the state re- 
ligion, and that the state religion made the chief of them 
drink hemlock. Prince of educators as he was, he some- 
times laid too heavy a strain on his pupils, and prema- 
turely developed their speculative tendencies. In the 
case of Clough especially, mental health and vigor seem 
to have been impaired by premature development. 

With Thomas Arnold may be coupled his friend Whate- 
ly, who, though, as Primate of the state Church of Ire- 
land, he held the most equivocal of prelacies, was, by 
reason of his strong understanding, his fearless charac- 

551 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ter, and his shrewd wit, essentially an iconoclast and a 
rebuker of ecclesiastical pretensions, as well as a vig- 
orous promoter of education. His keen sayings flew 
abroad, but his personal influence was greater than his 
influence as a divine. His Historic Doubts was an apol- 
ogetic jeu d 'esprit which told greatly in its day. 

Bishop Connop Thirl wall was a man of first-rate 
power. At Cambridge he had set out as a rationalist, 
translating German theology of a heterodox cast and 
Niebuhr's History of Rome. But his intellect was curbed 
by a bishopric, and though he delivered liberal charges 
and personally exerted a liberal influence, he was lost to 
the direct service of reason. 

Arthur Stanley was Arnold's best boy, his most de- 
voted adherent, and his model biographer. He embraced 
Arnold's theory of the Church as coextensive with 
the nation and carried his theory of the supremacy 
of the state so far as to feel a certain sympathy with 
" Bluidie Mackenzie " as the defender of a state Church 
against the independence of the Covenanters of Scotland. 
His name was for a time a terror to all the orthodox, 
High Church or Low. Yet there was little that was 
terrible about him. The sweetness of his character was 
remarkable. His liberality of religious sentiment was 
boundless. But he had little of the logical or critical 
faculty, and showed scarcely the desire, still less the abil- 
ity, to make his way to definite truth. His passion was 
history, and the historical picturesque was his forte. 
In a haze of this to the last he floated, coming to no de- 
terminate conclusion. His best works, apart from biog- 
raphy, are not his commentaries or sermons, but his 
lectures on the history of the Russian Church and his 
Sinai and Palestine; although we cannot help smiling 
when, in his Sinai and Palestine, we see him hunting 
with passionate interest and implicit faith for the imag- 
inary scenes of mythical events. 

552 



RELIGION 

Stanley's yoke-fellow, Jowett, was a man of a differ- 
ent cast of mind and of higher calibre, as all the world now 
knows. But in him also, though from different causes, 
there was the same want of inclination to grasp or ca- 
pacity for grasping definite truth. These two men were 
eminently typical of an age of religious dissolution, 
when people felt the ground of faith giving way under 
their feet and were striving, by some sort of compromise, 
to save themselves from falling into the abyss. That 
Jowett had drifted very far away, not only from ortho- 
doxy, but from his belief in Christianity as a miraculous 
revelation, and even from belief in our knowledge of the 
historical character of Christ, the posthumous publica- 
tion of his letters has plainly shown. How he could have 
reconciled it to his conscience to remain a clergyman, 
to hold the clerical headship of an Anglican college, to 
perform the service and administer the sacrament, it is 
not easy to see. We can only say that the position was 
found tenable by one of the most upright and disinterest- 
ed of mankind. Jowett's defence probably was and is 
the defence of others, and the indication of spreading 
doubt. Clergymen are educated men and can hardly 
be proof against that which is carrying conviction to 
other minds. 

Robertson, of Brighton, as an eloquent preacher and 
spiritual leader, rather on the rationalist side, is not to 
be forgotten. In his sermons there is an evident ten- 
dency to liberalize Christianity and to present it ethi- 
cally as a religion of purity and love rather than as 
a miraculous revelation which did not escape the keen 
scent of alarmed orthodoxy and exposed the preacher 
to some social persecution. 

By this time a strong current in an opposite direction 
had begun to flow. The religious movement was closely 
connected with the political movement, especially where 
there was a state Church. Alarmed by the progress of 

553 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

liberalism, which had carried the Parliamentary Re- 
form bill and threatened to withdraw from the Church 
of England the support of the state, some of the clergy 
began to look about for a new foundation of their au- 
thority, and thought that they found it in apostolical 
succession and the sacerdotal theory of the sacraments. 
The leaders of the movement were Pusey, professor of 
Hebrew at Oxford; Henry Newman, a Fellow of Oriel 
College; and, in its opening, Hurrell Froude, in whose 
Life of Becket its spirit and aims are plainly revealed. 
It took practically the shape of an attempt to return to 
the priestly Middle Ages. Oxford, with its mediaeval 
colleges, the Fellows of which were then clerical and 
celibate, formed the natural scene of such an attempt. 
Pusey, who, by his academical rank, gave his name to the 
movement, was a man of monastic character and mind, 
with a piety intense but austere and gloomy enough al- 
most to cling to such a doctrine as the irremissibility of 
post-baptismal sin. Henry Newman was a man of ge- 
nius, a writer with a most charming and persuasive 
style, great personal fascination, and extraordinary 
subtlety of mind. What he lacked was the love of truth; 
system, not truth, was his aspiration ; and as a reasoner 
he was extremely sophistical, however honest he might 
be as a man. In this respect he presented a singular con- 
trast to his brother, Francis Newman, in whom the love 
of truth was the ruling passion, intense and uncompro- 
mising, while he was totally devoid of the gifts of imag- 
ination with which Henry was endowed. Henry New- 
man's attempt to revive mediaeval doctrines presently 
landed him, with his immediate following, in the mediaeval 
Church. Pusey was illogical enough to refuse the leap. 
He was also believed to be rather strongly attached to 
the leadership and spiritual directorship which, as a 
magnate of the Church of England, he enjoyed. He 
went so near to the brink as, in his Irenicon, to avow 

554 



RELIGION 

that nothing separated him from Rome but the unmeas- 
ured autocracy of the Pope and the excessive worship of 
the Virgin, both of them mere questions of degree. Man- 
ning in time followed : an aspiring hierarch who would 
probably have stayed in the Church of England if they 
had made him a bishop. Passing into the Church of 
Rome, he became a Cardinal, an active intriguer of the 
Vatican, and an extreme Ultramontane, outvying New- 
man, who, when the convert's first ecstasy was over, 
might be said to be converted rather than changed. 

The mediae valizing movement owed much to the fas- 
cinations of mediaeval art. The Gothic churches and 
cathedrals and the Gothic ruins of abbeys have been 
very powerful conservators and propagators of the faith 
of their builders. It is curious that this talisman should 
have been renounced by the Church of Rome in favor 
of the heathen style, of which St. Peter's is the paragon, 
magnificent but, in a religious sense, unimpressive. 

By the progress of Tractarianism British Protestant- 
ism was alarmed and incensed. The Oxford Convoca- 
tion was the scene of a pitched battle brought on by a 
bold deliverance of Ward, a disciple of Newman, more 
logical and daring than his master, who exultingly pro- 
claimed that English clergymen were embracing "the 
whole cycle of Roman doctrine." Ward, after a struggle 
which was a sort of Armageddon of High and Low 
Church, was condemned and deprived of his degree. 
Newman's conversion speedily followed. The rational- 
ists, such as Stanley and Jowett, voted on liberal 
grounds against the condemnation of Ward. 

A storm from the other quarter was raised by Essays 
and Reviews, a collection of seven essays written by 
clergymen of the rationalistic school, having for its object 
the liberalizing of inquiry in the Church. The manifesto 
at the time created an immense sensation, though in the 
present advanced state of doctrinal disintegration it would 

555 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

almost pass unnoticed. One of the essays, the most 
innocent, it is true, which nevertheless committed the 
author to the general object of the combination, was 
written by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
caused the High Church clergy to protest against his 
appointment as a bishop. The glove thus thrown down 
was taken up by the High Churchmen. The writers 
were arraigned for heresy before the Privy Council, 
and, as Carlyle said, you had a bench of old British 
judges, "like Roman augurs, debating with iron gravity 
questions of prevenient grace, supervenient moonshine, 
and the color of the bishop's nightmare if that happened 
to turn up." Before the same tribunal was arraigned 
Colenso, a missionary bishop of South Africa and an 
eminent mathematician, whose arithmetical instincts 
had led him to examine the numerical statements of the 
Pentateuch, with highly heretical results. Both the 
essayists and Bishop Colenso escaped conviction. The 
Committee of Privy Council, if it was judicial, was also 
political, and it was resolved, if possible, to avert a rupture 
in the state Church. Veteran lawyers had little dif- 
ficulty in finding grounds for acquittal when they did 
not choose to convict. The language of the impugned 
writings was seldom so precise as to defy the power of 
interpretation. "Either the passage means what I 
say, or it has no meaning," thundered the counsel for 
the prosecution. "Is it not possible, Mr. Blank, that the 
passage may have no meaning?" was the reply of the 
judge. The Rev. Mr. Voysey, however, succeeded in 
obtaining the honor of a conviction. Tendered a week 
to retract, he thanked the court for the opportunity they 
had given him of rejecting the offer of repurchasing his 
once cherished position in the Established Church by 
proclaiming himself a hypocrite. 

Hampden, Regius Professor of Theology at Oxford, 
formed another object of High Church attack. He had 

556 



RELIGION 

been condemned by the university on account of doc- 
trines alleged to be anti -Trinitarian, and his appoint- 
ment by a Whig ministry to a bishopric caused a renewal 
of the onslaught, which, however, only served by its 
failure to emphasize the fact that the Church of England 
was in complete subjection to the state. In this, as in 
the general commotion, prominently figured Wilberforce, 
Bishop of Oxford, son of the great evangelical and philan- 
thropist, a man gifted, dexterous, and versatile, who 
would have made a first-rate advocate or politician, 
balancing himself with one foot on his hereditary Evan- 
gelicism, the other on High Churchmanship, to which, 
in his heart, as a hierarch, he inclined. A character so 
ambiguous could make little impression, however great 
his abilities might be. 

James Anthony Froude had been a follower and fellow- 
worker of Newman. But on Newman's secession he not 
only hung back, but violently recoiled and produced a 
highly sceptical work, The Nemesis of Faith, which 
entailed his resignation of a clerical fellowship in an 
Oxford college. Then he exemplified the strange varia- 
tions of the age by coming out as an historian in the 
colors of Carlyle. 

Carlyle himself is not to be left out of sight in an ac- 
count of the progress of religious thought ; for his Scotch 
Calvinism, transmuted into hero worship, has taken a 
strong hold, if not on the distinct convictions, on the 
sentiment and temper of the nation. If he has adminis- 
tered wholesome rebuke to the self-complacency of democ- 
racy with its ballot-box, he has also set up a worship of 
force and kindled a spirit of violence totally subversive 
of the Sermon on the Mount. 

Matthew Arnold, with his silver shafts, was rather a 
connoisseur in all lines than a serious philosopher or 
theologian ; but he also, with his conversion of God into 
the "not ourselves which makes for righteousness/' 

557 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

did something in his light but insinuating and charm- 
ing way to forward disintegration. 

But in 1874—77 appeared Supernatural Religion, a 
searching and uncompromising inquiry into the histori- 
cal evidences of supernatural Christianity. The book, 
though attacked on secondary points with perhaps 
superior learning by Bishop Lightfoot, Bishop Westcott, 
and others, cannot be said to have met with any general 
answer. Supplemented in some respects by Dr. Mar- 
tineau's Seat of Authority in Religion and other works 
on the same side, it sets forth the sceptic's case against 
the supernatural. 

Miracles, says criticism, belong to an age of ignorance. 
With the dawn of knowledge they diminish. In its 
meridian light they disappear. The Jews were eminent- 
ly addicted to belief in miracles. There was Satanic 
miracle as well as divine; nor can any distinction be 
drawn as a matter of evidence between the two. As little 
can any distinction be drawn in point of evidence be- 
tween the Gospel miracles and the ecclesiastical miracles, 
which nevertheless Protestants reject. The miracles of 
one sort, the demoniac, are bound up with the Jewish 
belief in possession by personal devils, from which all 
efforts to disentangle them so as to resolve them into 
cures of lunacy by moral influence are vain. The four 
Gospels and the Acts, which comprise the historic evi- 
dences, are all anonymous, all of uncertain authorship. 
The first three Gospels are evident incrustations upon 
an older document which is lost and about which nothing 
is known. In not one of the five cases can the existence 
of the book be traced to the time of the events or a time 
so near the events as to preclude the growth of fable in a 
highly superstitious and totally uncritical age. The 
presentation of Christ's character and teaching in the 
fourth Gospel, which is Alexandrian, is far from identical 
with the presentation in the first three Gospels, which 

558 



RELIGION 

are Jewish. There are irreconcilable discrepancies be- 
tween the Gospels as to matters of fact, notably in regard 
to the genealogy of Christ, the length of his mission, the 
Last Supper, the day of the Crucifixion, the details of 
the Resurrection and the Ascension. Such miracles as 
the miraculous darkness, the earthquake, the rending of 
the veil of the Temple, the opening of the tombs and the 
apparition of the dead in the streets of Jerusalem, being 
totally unconfirmed by history or by any recorded effect, 
stagger belief. Such testimony as St. Paul bears to the 
Resurrection is second hand, is that of a convert in the 
ecstasy of conversion, and is manifestly uncritical. His 
own enthusiasm is intelligible on merely human grounds. 
We may be sure that had God become incarnate to save 
man, absolutely conclusive proof of that fact would have 
been vouchsafed. But the proof is not sufficient to es- 
tablish anything not otherwise perfectly credible, far 
less to establish the miraculous Birth, the Resurrection, 
and the Incarnation. Such in broad outline is the case 
of Rationalism against Supernatural Religion presented 
by the work just mentioned and its allies. The effects 
are visible even in High Church writings. In the writ- 
ings of liberals, of course, they are still more visible. 
Jowett had come to the conclusion that our sources of 
knowledge about Christ had been reduced to a single 
document, no longer in existence, which formed the basis 
of the first three Gospels. 

The desire to minimize the supernatural and throw it 
into the background, bringing the personal character 
of Christ and his ethical teaching into the foreground, is 
now manifest in English, as it has long been in German, 
divines. It is conspicuous in the very popular and color- 
ably orthodox works of Dr. Farrar. In his Life of Lives 
the supernatural has little place. There is an evident 
tendency throughout to disentangle from it the character 
and moral teaching. Responsibility for belief in the 

559 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

Godhead of Christ seems to rest on the Nicene Council. 
In the Life of Christ we see reduced to a natural occur- 
rence the miracle of Gadara, where the devils cast out of 
the men enter into the herd of swine. It is needless to 
say that with the miraculous element of these occurrences 
their value as evidence for the supernatural disappears. 

Scotland generally remained fast bound by her West- 
minster Confession. There had been a period of liberal- 
ism marked by the appearance of "Jupiter" Carlyle; 
Robertson, the historian; Dugald Stewart, and other 
philosophers and men of mind. But the Church of Scot- 
land being democratic, its faith was in the keeping of the 
people, who were impervious to criticism and naturally 
opposed to innovation. At last, however, the thaw 
came, hastened perhaps by the collision between the 
state Church of Scotland and the Free Church. The 
Westminster Confession, it seems, has now been tacitly 
laid aside, and Scotch theology has had its Robertson 
Smith, whose critical views on the Old Testament earned 
him removal from his professorial chair. 

Another book which in its day startled the world and 
awakened all the echoes of orthodox alarm was Buckle's 
History of Civilization, in which the characters of 
nations and the progress of humanity were traced to 
physical influences, excluding the moral and by impli- 
cation the theistic element. Its thesis was supported by 
an overwhelming display of learning. Though not ex- 
pressly, it was in its tenor hostile to religious belief. Of 
Buckle's work less is now heard, but it had an influence 
in its day, perhaps more in America than in its native 
land. Americans, it seems, were captured both by the 
boldness of the theory and by the imposing display of 
erudition. 

In the line of learned and dispassionate research France 
has produced Renan, whose Life of Jesus especially 
made a vast impression on Europe, and still probably ex- 

560 



RELIGION 

ercises an influence by virtue not only of the boldness of 
the speculation and the intense interest of the subject, 
but of the extreme beauty of the style. The work, how- 
ever, is one in which imagination acts strongly on his- 
tory. It lacks critical basis; not that the author fails 
fully to set out his authorities, but that in his narrative 
he fails to discriminate among them. One incident is 
treated as real, another as mythical, to suit the require- 
ments of poetical conception, without reason assigned 
for the distinction. There seems no reason, for exam- 
ple, why the miracle of the raising of Lazarus should 
be treated as historical, though in the sense of imposture 
or illusion, while other miracles are treated as totally un- 
historic. Nor is the portrait free from a French and 
slightly sensuous cast. From the whole body of Renan's 
histories of Israel, of Christ, and of the early Church the 
supernatural is entirely excluded. 

The Roman Catholic Church has not suffered from 
criticism — historical, literary, or scientific — in the same 
way as the Protestant Churches, that is, internally, be- 
cause it depends not so much on intellectual conviction 
as on ecclesiastical organization, and rests comparatively 
little on the authority of the Bible. Its priesthood has 
not been affected like the clergy of the Church of England 
or the ministries of the Protestant Churches. But it has 
everywhere been losing the educated classes, or retained 
a part of them, not so much from conviction — still less 
from speculative conviction — as because its alliance is 
congenial to political and social reaction. Its inability 
to come to terms with science has been shown by the re- 
cent case of St. George Mivart, and scientific eminence 
among Roman Catholics is rare. In Italy, the centre of 
the system, while the poorer classes still flock to the lique- 
faction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples or the exu- 
dation of the bones of St. Andrew at Amalfi, still climb the 
Holy Staircase on their knees or make pilgrimages to 
2N 561 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the House of Loretto, the general tone of intelligence is 
described as sceptical, though aristocratic families, more 
especially those of Papal creation, adhere to the Papacy 
on political and social rather than on religious grounds. 
Near to the shrine of Ignatius Loyola stands the statue 
of Giordano Bruno, on the spot of his martyrdom by 
fire, "dedicated to him by the age which he foresaw." 
Attempts have been made to liberalize the Church of 
Rome and enable it to float with the current of the day, 
but they have failed. Pio Nono for a time put himself 
at the head of the popular and liberal movement in Italy. 
But he soon found, as Carlyle said, that it was an alarm- 
ing undertaking. Lamennais's attempt at liberalization 
ended, after a long intellectual agony, in his own seces- 
sion. The combined attempt of Lacordaire to liberalize 
ecclesiastically, and of Montalembert to liberalize politi- 
cally, had a scarcely less melancholy result; both of 
them died under the shadow of Papal displeasure or of 
that of the Jesuit party, by which the Papacy was con- 
trolled. The defiantly reactionary spirit of Ultramon- 
tanism de Maistre has prevailed. The Jesuit has ruled 
at the Vatican. Under his guidance the Papacy has 
proclaimed the infallibility of the Pope and the Immacu- 
late Conception of the Virgin, thus breaking completely 
and finally with reason and with all who, like the " Old 
Catholics " in Germany, remained in some degree within 
that pale. It has gained in its own despite in respectabil- 
ity and influence by deprivation of its temporal power, 
against which the Prisoner of the Vatican still hopelessly 
protests. 

In France the national religion, abolished and perse- 
cuted by the Jacobins, was restored for a political pur- 
pose by Napoleon. The new Charlemagne was requited 
with the degradation of the Pope, who came to Paris to 
crown him on the morrow of the murder of the Due 
d'Enghien and broke the best traditions of the Holy See 

562 



RELIGION 

by failing to veto the divorce from Josephine. Identi- 
fied with political reaction under the restored Bourbons, 
the Church nearly suffered wreck in the revolution by 
which they were overthrown. She remained the object 
of intense and persecuting hatred to the revolutionary 
and republican party. Plaintively, when the Orleans 
monarchy fell, she chanted Domine salvum fac populum. 
Joyously, when the Empire succeeded, she chanted 
Domine salvum fac Imperatorem. But the Empire in 
its turn fell. The Church has continued to ally herself 
with political reaction and aristocratic hostility to the 
Republic, though she has latterly been receiving hints 
from the Vatican that the Republic is strong, that the 
monarchical and imperial pretenders both are weak. 
The consequence is a violence of hostility on the part of 
the Radicals and Socialists which assails not only mo- 
nastic fraternities, but educational institutions and even 
charitable institutions in clerical hands, and has pro- 
duced an infidel literature carrying blasphemy to the 
height almost of frenzy and culminating in a comic Life 
of Christ. The official world of France is almost formal- 
ly infidel, and a religious expression would be very in- 
jurious to a politician. On the other hand, the Church 
braves and exasperates public reason with apparitions 
of the Virgin and the miracles of Lourdes. Over most 
of the women, the priest still holds sway. Of the men, 
not many are seen in churches. The general attitude 
of the educated towards religion seems to be not so much 
that of hostility as that of total indifference, a state of 
estrangement more hopeless than hostility itself. 

There is in France a Protestant Church, of which 
Guizot was an eminent member, and which in his time 
was renewing its life. But there was a schism in it be- 
tween an evangelical party and a party which was en- 
tirely rationalist, Guizot belonging to the first, his son- 
in-law to the second; and rationalism seems to have 

563 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

prevailed. With the Protestant party of France was 
allied an evangelical party in Switzerland, of which 
Vinet was the most eloquent divine. But in Vinet, as in 
liberal divines generally, we find an inclination to rest 
on the spiritual rather than on the supernatural. In 
the city of Calvin generally opinions appear to reign 
more opposed to the religion of Calvin than those for 
which he burned Servetus. 

But of the disintegrating forces criticism — the Higher 
Criticism as it is the fashion to call it — has by no means 
been the only one. Another, and perhaps in recent times 
the more powerful, has been science, from which Voltaire 
and the earlier sceptics received little or no assistance 
in their attacks; for they were unable to meet even the 
supposed testimony of fossils to the Flood. It is curious 
that the bearing of the Newtonian astronomy on the 
Biblical cosmography should not have been before per- 
ceived ; most curious that it should have escaped Newton 
himself. His system plainly contravened the idea which 
made the earth the centre of the universe, with heaven 
above and hell below it, and by which the cosmography 
alike of the Old and the New Testament is pervaded. 
Yet the Star of Bethlehem remained little disturbed as 
an article of faith. The first destructive blow from the 
region of science was perhaps dealt by geology, which 
showed that the earth had been gradually formed, not 
suddenly created, that its antiquity immeasurably tran- 
scended the orthodox chronology, and that death had 
come into the world long before man. Geologists, scared 
by the echoes of their own teaching, were fain to shelter 
themselves under allegorical interpretations of Genesis 
totally foreign to the intentions of the writer; making 
out the " days " of Creation to be aeons, a version which, 
even if accepted, would not have accounted for the en- 
trance of death into the world before the creation of man. 
Those who attended the lectures of Buckland and other 

564 



RELIGION 

geologists of that generation well recollect the shifts to 
which science had recourse in its efforts to avoid collision 
with the cosmogony supposed to have been dictated by 
the Creator to the reputed author of the Pentateuch. 
That the narrative of Genesis could hold its ground so 
long against science was due at once to its dignity, which 
earned for it the praise of Longinus, and to its approx- 
imation to scientific truth in describing the universe as 
the work of a single mind. These characteristics have 
even in the day of geology and Darwin raised up for 
it such an apologist as Mr. Gladstone, whose defence, 
however, amounts to this, that the Creator, in giving an 
account of his own work to Moses, came remarkably 
near the truth. 

The grand catastrophe, however, was the discovery 
of Darwin. This assailed the belief that man was a 
distinct creation, apart from all other animals, with an 
immortal soul specially breathed into him by the author 
of his being. It showed that he had been developed by a 
natural process out of lower forms of life. It showed 
that instead of a fall of man there had been a gradual 
rise, thus cutting away the ground of the Redemption 
and the Incarnation, the fundamental doctrines of the 
orthodox creed. For the hypothesis of creation gen- 
erally was substituted that of evolution by some un- 
known but natural force. 

Not only to revealed or supernatural but to natural 
religion a heavy blow was dealt by the disclosure of 
wasted aeons and abortive species which seem to pre- 
clude the idea of an intelligent and omnipotent designer. 

The chief interpreters of science in its bearing on re- 
ligion were, in England, Tyndall and Huxley. Tyndall 
always declared himself a materialist, though no one 
could less deserve the name if it implied anything like 
grossness or disregard of the higher sentiments. He 
startled the world by his declaration that matter contain- 

565 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ed the potentiality of all life, an assertion which, though 
it has been found difficult to prove experimentally, there 
can be less difficulty in accepting, since we see life in 
rudimentary forms and in different stages of develop- 
ment. Huxley wielded a trenchant pen and was an un- 
compromising servant of truth. A bitter controversy 
between him and Owen arose out of Owen's tendency to 
compromise. He came at one time to the extreme con- 
clusion that man was an automaton, which would have 
settled all religious and moral questions out of hand; 
but in this he seemed afterwards to feel that he had gone 
too far. An automaton automatically reflecting on its 
automatic character is a being which seems to defy con- 
ception. The connection of action with motive, of motive 
with character and circumstance, is what nobody doubts ; 
but the precise nature of the connection, as it is not sub- 
ject, like a physical connection, to our inspection, defies 
scrutiny, and our consciousness, which is our only in- 
formant, tells us that our agency in some qualified 
sense is free. 

Materialists or physicists such as Tyndall and Huxley, 
or their counterparts on the Continent, would console us 
for the loss of religion by substituting the majesty of 
law. But the idea of law implies a law -giver or an 
intelligent and authoritative imponent of some kind. 
There is no majesty in a mere sequence, even the most 
invariable and on the largest scale, the existence of 
which alone physical science can prove. 

The all-embracing philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer 
excludes not only the supernatural but theism in its 
ordinary form. Yet theism in a subtle form may be 
thought to lurk in it. "By continually seeking," he 
says, " to know, and being continually thrown back with 
a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, 
we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our 
highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that 

566 



RELIGION 

through which all things exist as the Unknowable." 
In this and subsequent passages he evidently looks upon 
the Unknowable as an object of reverence, otherwise it 
would hardly be our highest duty to regard it as that 
through which all things exist, or to maintain any par- 
ticular attitude towards it. But Unknowableness in it- 
self excites no reverence, even though it be supposed 
infinite and eternal. Nothing excites our reverence 
but a person, or at least a Moral Being. There lingers 
in Mr. Spencer's mind the belief that the present limit 
of our knowledge is the veil of the Deity. 

Had the Darwinian discoveries been known to Schopen- 
hauer they would have conspired with the earlier dis- 
coveries of science and with his pitiless survey of the 
human lot to confirm him in the belief that this was the 
worst of all possible worlds. Amid the general distrac- 
tion even pessimism has found adherents, and a Euro- 
pean version of Buddhism promising final relief from 
the miseries of conscious existence has been accepted 
as an anodyne by troubled minds. 

Positivism, the work of Comte, totally discards belief 
in God and treats theism in all its forms as merely a 
mode of contemplating phenomena and a step in the 
course of human progress. Yet the Positivist feels the 
need of a religion, and for the worship of God he sub- 
stitutes the worship of Humanity. Humanity is an 
abstraction and an imperfect abstraction, the course of 
the human race having not yet been run. It cannot hear 
prayer or respond in any way to adoration. The ad- 
herents of Comte's religion, therefore, are few, though 
those of his philosophy are more numerous, and the re- 
ligious Comtists appear to be rather enthusiasts of Hu- 
manity than worshippers of the abstraction. 

A conspicuous though equivocal place among the de- 
fenders of revealed religion in England was held by 
Mansel, professor of moral and metaphysical philosophy 

567 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

at Oxford and afterwards dean of St. Paul's. Attempting 
in his Bampton lectures to make philosophy fall on its 
own sword, he fell on his own sword in the attempt. He 
maintained that God, being absolute, could not be ap- 
prehended by the finite intelligence of man, and that the 
finite morality of man was not the same as the absolute 
morality of God. Hence the passages of the Bible which 
seemed to conflict with human morality really tran- 
scended it and were moral miracles. In this Mansel was 
reviving the theory of Archbishop King and Bishop 
Browne, who had maintained that our knowledge of 
God was not actual, but merely analogous. The in- 
ference was promptly drawn by Mansel's opponents that 
what could not be apprehended could not be matter of 
belief, and that he had therefore cut away the possibility 
of belief in God. They even contended that he was too 
anti-theistic, since he did away with all possibility of 
reverence for the Unknown. To deny the identity of 
human with divine morality and assert that what was 
immoral with man was moral with God was to sever the 
moral relation between God and man, and, in effect, to 
destroy morality altogether. We could conceive of only 
one morality, and acts ascribed to God which violated 
that morality must be to us immoral. "If," said John 
Stuart Mill in the fervor of ethical protest, " an Almighty 
Being tells me that I shall call that righteous which is 
wicked or go to hell, to hell I will go." 

To meet the inroads of science on Biblical cosmogony 
and cosmography recourse was had to allegorical in- 
terpretation. But allegorical interpretation cannot be 
forced upon a writer when it manifestly is not in his mind. 
The writer or writers of Genesis undeniably intended his 
or their statements to be taken literally. They meant 
that the earth was really created in six days, as the Fourth 
Commandment assumes; that the formation of Eve out 
of a rib of Adam, the temptation of Eve by the serpent, and 

568 



RELIGION 

all the actions of the anthropomorphic God, who walks 
in the garden at evening and makes garments for Adam 
and Eve, were actual events. To foist upon them alle- 
gorical interpretation is to falsify their testimony. Be- 
sides, instead of having the facts of the creation revealed 
to us we are left to interpret allegory at a venture. 

Recourse has been had to the theory of partial in- 
spiration, admitting historical and even moral errors in 
Scripture, but setting them down to the human element 
in the composition, which has to be recognized without 
prejudice to that element which remains divine. Such 
a collaboration of infallibility with fallibility, both his- 
torical and moral, is a desperate hypothesis, especially 
when the object was to reveal vital truths to man. 
Nor could man distinguish the human element from the 
divine without being himself inspired and thus above 
the need of revelation. A condescension of the divine 
to the primitive shortcomings and aberrations of hu- 
manity is a solution surely opposed to any conceivable 
purpose of revelation. 

Another line of defence has been the hypothesis, which 
may be called quasi-inspiration, reducing the inspiration 
of the Scriptures to a supreme degree of the same sort of 
inspiration which we recognize in a great poet or a great 
author of any kind. This is mere playing with the term 
"inspiration," and little better than an equivoque. It 
may be, and we hope it is, true that the Author of our 
being manifests Himself in whatever is morally grand 
and elevating. But this belief is very different from a 
belief in the special inspiration of the Bible. 

Evolution, again, which at first was repelled as atheistic, 
is now adopted by some as the key to revelation and the 
solution of all difficulties connected with it. This would 
make God in His revelation of Himself to man, without 
apparent motive, subject Himself to a physical or quasi- 
physical law, the knowledge of which has been withheld 

569 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

from man till the present time. An imperfect revelation 
of the divine character, one for example which should 
exhibit the justice of God without His mercy, would be 
a deception of man instead of a revelation. Besides, 
evolution repels finality, and we could have no assurance 
that the manifestation of the divine nature in Christ and 
the Gospel would be final. 

It is needless to say how manifestly all these theories 
have their origin in controversial necessity, how totally 
alien they are to the view taken hitherto by the Christian 
Churches of the Scriptures, and how unlikely it is that 
God, in revealing Himself to man for the purpose of hu- 
man salvation, should have chosen a method such as 
would entail inevitable misconstruction for many cen- 
turies and postpone the true interpretation of His charac- 
ter and dealings to an age of human criticism and science. 

The ethics of Christianity have hitherto comparatively 
escaped systematic criticism and are still generally and 
officially professed. An appeal to the principles of the 
Sermon on the Mount continues to command formal 
respect. But Christ's view of this world as evil and his 
renunciation of it for the Kingdom of God have been 
practically laid aside by all but specially religious men. 
Christ's moral code was, in its direct bearing, only per- 
sonal or social, politics and commerce not having come 
within the view of the teacher of Galilee. In regard to 
public and international concerns, the abjuration of his 
principles is most striking. In that sphere Christian 
meekness, mercy, and self-sacrifice are being openly 
superseded by maxims drawn from the Darwinian Strug- 
gle for Existence and by avowals of the right of the strong. 
Even professed ministers of Christ have been pandering 
to Imperialism and the lust of war. In truth, by a strange 
turn of events, Christian ethics, in questions between 
nation and nation and in questions concerning humanity 
at large, have been passing out of the hands of the or- 

570 



RELIGION 

thodox teachers of supernatural Christianity into those 
of men who recognize only the human character and 
ethical teachings of life. 

Professor Seeley in his earlier days had made a great 
impression with his Ecce Homo, an attempt to bring the 
character of Christ nearer to the heart of humanity. 
The work was decidedly pietist ; yet a rationalizing ten- 
dency was scented in it by the Evangelicals, whose leader, 
Lord Shaftesbury, denounced it. Its author promised 
a theology. But when, after years of reflection and 
subjection to the influences of a moving time, the theology 
came, under the title of Natural Religion, it was a total 
disappointment. Religion was reduced by it to en- 
thusiasm, not exclusively Christian or even theistic, 
but of any kind, such as enthusiastic love of country or 
of art. 

Minds of the finer cast have preserved the religious 
spirit, while they have thrown off the shackles of creed 
and even regarded the whole religious question as matter 
of doubt and suspense. 

"There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 

This is the pervading spirit of Tennyson's poems, and 
of such a work as Amiel's diary, but it must manifestly 
be confined to a circle of minds such as those of Tenny- 
son and Amiel. Agnosticism is the condition into which 
a large number of educated minds have been more or less 
consciously passing or drifting. But while in some of 
them a religious spirit still prevails and the hope is cher- 
ished of a new religious dawn, others seem to have finally 
settled in the conviction that theological inquiry is hope- 
less and that our knowledge must forever be bounded by 
that which our senses and science tell us about the laws 
or forces of our own world. 

Reluctance to give up belief in the unseen world and 

571 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

perhaps still more unwillingness to think that the loved 
ones who are lost by death are lost forever have given birth 
to Spiritualism. It will hardly be thought necessary to 
comment on an illusion which has been so often and so 
decisively exposed. Its very name is belied when the 
spirits have to materialize before they can make their 
existence known or hold converse with those who evoke 
them. The alleged communications from the spirit 
world through such a medium as Planchette have been 
trivial, almost fatuous. It is now forgotten that the 
movement began with table-turning, as though spirits 
had a special affinity for tables. 

Among the anti-theistic, or at least the anti-ecclesias- 
tical, influences and the solvents of our religious system 
may be reckoned the foundation of systems of morality 
independent of the divine sanction. Paley's definition 
of virtue is " the doing good to mankind in obedience to 
the will of God and for the sake of everlasting happiness/' 
This is the theistic view. Opposed to it is the Utilita- 
rian system, generally connected with Bentham's name, 
which finds the sole and sufficient motive and reward 
of virtue in the promotion of our well-being here. So 
long as a system aims at perfection and beauty of charac- 
ter which transcend temporal happiness there is in the 
philosophy a theistic element, patent or latent. But 
of perfection and beauty of character the Utilitarian phi- 
losophy in its thorough-going form takes no account. 

The weakening of religious belief as a social influence 
on the conservative side is very marked and excites the 
fears of statesmen, some of whom, even if they are Prot- 
estants, are inclined to look with complacency on the 
Papacy as a bulwark against social revolution. The 
drudge rested in dull contentment with his lot while he 
could believe that hereafter the parts of Dives and Lazarus 
would be reversed and full amends would be made to him 
for his privations in this life. This hope having vanished, 

572 



RELIGION 

he is resolved, if he can, to have a share of the good things 
of the present world. That this sentiment helps to set 
seething the caldron of socialistic and communistic 
agitation, all who are familiar with labor literature must 
be aware. It would probably be found that anarchism 
and atheism generally went together. 

As the natural consequence of the loosened hold of 
religion over the nations, there has been a general ten- 
dency in Europe towards disestablishment. In Italy, 
the seat of the Papacy, disestablishment is complete. 
In SjDain, while Catholicism is still recognized as the 
exclusive religion of the nation, the immense revenues 
of the clergy have been secularized, monasteries have 
been dissolved, and religion has been almost reduced to a 
department of the state. In France the process has gone 
still further than in Spain, and religion may almost be 
said to be not only a department, but a despised depart- 
ment, of the state. In Ireland the state Church has 
been disestablished. A bill has been brought in for the 
disestablishment of the Church in Wales, and in England 
disestablishment seems to be approaching, its advent 
being hastened by the collision of ritualism with the anti- 
Roman and anti-sacerdotal spirit of the nation. Popular 
education has everywhere been largely secularized, and 
that process is still going on. Sunday-schools or other 
secondary influences can scarcely countervail the general 
banishment of religion from the training of the child. 

Religion passed from old to New England in the form 
of a refugee Protestantism of the most intensely Biblical 
and the most austere kind. It had, notably in Connecticut, 
a code of moral and social law which, if fully carried into 
effect, must have fearfully darkened life. It produced 
in Jonathan Edwards the philosopher of Calvinism, from 
the meshes of whose predestinarian logic it has been 
found difficult to escape, though all such reasonings 
are practically rebutted by our indefeasible conscious- 

573 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

ness of freedom of choice and of responsibility as attend- 
ant thereon. New England Puritanism was intolerant, 
even persecuting ; but the religious founder and prophet 
of Rhode Island proclaimed the principles of perfect tolera- 
tion and of the entire separation of the Church from the 
state. The ice of New England Puritanism was grad- 
ually thawed by commerce, non- Puritan immigration 
from the old country, and social influences, as much as by 
the force of intellectual emancipation; though in found- 
ing universities and schools it had in fact prepared for 
its own ultimate subversion. Unitarianism was a half- 
way house through which Massachusetts passed into 
thorough-going liberalism such as we find in Emerson, 
Thoreau, and the circle of Brook Farm ; and afterwards 
into the iconoclasm of Ingersoll. The only Protestant 
Church of much importance to which the New World 
has given birth is the Universalist, a natural offspring 
of democratic humanity revolting against the belief in 
eternal fire. Enthusiasm unilluminated may still hold 
its camp-meetings and sing " Rock of Ages " in the grove 
under the stars. 

The main support of orthodox Protestantism in the 
United States now is an off-shoot from the old country. 
It is Methodism, which, by the perfection of its organ- 
ization, combining strong ministerial authority with a 
democratic participation of all members in the active 
service of the Church, has so far not only held its own 
but enlarged its borders and increased its power; its 
power, perhaps, rather than its spiritual influence, for 
the time comes when the fire of enthusiasm grows cold 
and class meetings lose their fervor. The member- 
ship is mostly drawn from a class little exposed to the 
disturbing influences of criticism or science; nor has 
the education of the ministers hitherto been generally 
such as to bring them into contact with the arguments 
of the sceptic. 

574 



RELIGION 

The character and intensity of the movement in Europe 
have been greatly influenced by the existence of state 
Churches and the degrees of obnoxious privilege which 
the state Churches severally have possessed. Where 
the yoke of the establishment was heavy, as in France 
under the Bourbons, free-thought has been lashed into 
fury; where, as in England, the ecclesiastical polity 
has been comparatively mild, it has taken the gentler 
form of evangelical dissent. In the United States at the 
beginning of the last century there were faint relics of 
state Churches, Churches, that is, recognized and pro- 
tected, though not endowed, by the state. But there 
has been little to irritate scepticism or provoke it to vio- 
lence of any kind, and the transition has accordingly 
been tranquil. Speculation, however, has now arrived 
at a point at which its results in the minds of the more in- 
quiring clergy come into collision with the dogmatic 
creeds of their Churches and their ordination tests. Es- 
pecially does awakened conscience rebel against the 
ironclad Calvinism of the Westminster Confession. 
Hence attempts, hitherto baffled, to revise the creeds; 
hence heresy trials, scandalous and ineffective. 

Who can undertake to say how far religion now in- 
fluences the inner life of the American people? Out- 
wardly life in the United States, in the Eastern States 
at least, is still religious. Churches are well maintained, 
congregations are full, offertories are liberal. It is still 
respectable to be a church-goer. Anglicanism, partly 
from its connection with the English hierarchy, is fash- 
ionable among the wealthy in cities. We note, however, 
that in all pulpits there is a tendency to glide from the 
spiritual into the social, if not into the material ; to edge 
away from the pessimistic view of the present world with 
which the Gospels are instinct ; to attend less exclusive- 
ly to our future, and more to our present state. Social 
reunions, picnics, and side-shows are growing in impor- 

575 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

tance as parts of the Church system. Jonathan Ed- 
wards, if he could now come among his people, would 
hardly find himself at home. 

The Catholic Church had come out to America in evil 
companionship with Spanish conquest. Together with 
the Spanish colonies she decayed, and her history dur- 
ing the past century in South America appears to have 
been that of a miserable decline which could add nothing 
to religious thought or history. Mexican liberalism, 
under the presidency of Juarez, cast off allegiance to 
her, and a priest dared not show himself in the dress of 
his order on the street. In French Canada the Catholic 
Church has reigned over a simple peasantry, her own 
from the beginning, thoroughly submissive to the priest- 
hood, willing to give freely of its little store for the build- 
ing of churches which tower over the hamlet, and suf- 
ficiently firm in its faith to throng to the fane of St. Anne 
Beaupre for miracles of healing. She has kept the hab- 
itant ignorant and unprogressive, but made him, after 
her rule, moral, insisting on early marriage, on remar- 
riage, controlling his habits and amusements with an 
almost Puritan strictness. Probably French Canada 
has been as good and as happy as anything the Catholic 
Church had to show. The priesthood was of the Gallican 
school. It lived on good terms with the state, though 
in French Canada the state was a conqueror. From 
fear of New England Puritanism it had kept its people 
loyal to Great Britain during the Revolutionary war. 
From fear of French atheism it kept its people loyal to 
Great Britain during the war with France. It sang Te 
Deum for Trafalgar. So things were till the other day. 
But then came the Jesuit. He got back, from the sub- 
serviency of the Canadian politicians, the lands which 
he had lost after the conquest and the suppression of 
his Order. He supplanted the Gallicans, captured the 
hierarchy and prevailed over the great Sulpician Mon- 

576 



RELIGION 

astery in a struggle for the pastorate of Montreal. Other 
influences have of late been working for change in a 
direction neither Gallican nor Jesuit. Railroads have 
broken into the rural seclusion which favored the as- 
cendency of the priest. Popular education has made 
some way. Newspapers have increased in number and 
are more read. The peasant has been growing restive 
under the burden of tithe and fabrique. Many of the 
habitants go into the Northern States of the Union for 
work, and return to their own country bringing with 
them republican ideas. Americans who have been 
shunning continental union from dread of French-Cana- 
dian popery may lay aside their fears. 

It was a critical moment for the Catholic Church when 
she undertook to extend her domain to the American 
Republic. She had there to encounter a genius radi- 
cally opposed to her own. The remnant of Catholic 
Marjdand could do little to help her on her landing. 
But she came in force with the flood of Irish, and after- 
wards of South German, emigration. How far she has 
been successful in holding these her lieges would be a 
question difficult to decide, as it would involve a rather 
impalpable distinction between formal membership and 
zealous attachment. That she loses the zealous attach- 
ment of a great part of them in two or three generations, 
and that of the South Germans more quickly than that 
of the Irish, is what you are commonly told. Conver- 
sions of native Americans flying from the distractions 
of controversy to the repose of unity under authority 
there have been, but the number probably has not been 
large. In America, as in England, Ritualism has served 
Roman Catholicism as a tender. The critical question 
was how the religion of the Middle Ages could succeed 
in making itself at home under the roof of a democratic 
republic, the animating spirit of which was freedom, 
intellectual and spiritual as well as political, while the 
20 577 



HE PROGRESS 



THE CENTURY 



wit of its people was proverbially keen and their national- 
ity was jealous as well as strong. The Papacy may 
call itself universal; in reality, it is Italian. During 
its sojourn in the French dominions the Popes were 
French; otherwise they have been Italians, native or 
domiciled, with the single exception of the Flemish 
Adrian VI., thrust into the chair of St. Peter by his pupil, 
Charles V., and 05^ the Italians treated with contumely 
as an alien intruder. The great majority of the Cardi- 
nals always has been and still is Italian. National 
susceptibilities, therefore, were pretty sure to be aroused. 
In meeting the difficulties of her new situation Rome has 
shown a certain measure of pliability. She has not 
thrust the intolerance and obscurantism of the encyc- 
lical in the face of the disciples of Jefferson. She 
has paid all due homage to republican institutions, alien 
though they are to her own spirit, as her uniform action 
in European politics hitherto has proved. She has made 
little show of relics. She has abstained from miracles. 
The adoration of Mary and the saints, though of course 
fully maintained, appears to be less prominent. Com- 
pared with the mediaeval cathedral and its multiplicity 
of side chapels, altars, and images, the cathedral at New 
York strikes one as the temple of a somewhat rational- 
ized version. Against Puritan intolerance of Popery, if 
any remnant of it remained, the Catholic vote has been 
a sufficient safeguard. To part of the American people, 
especially to wealthy New York, the purple of the cardinal- 
ate and the pomp of Catholic worship have of late been 
by no means uncongenial. Yet between the spirit of 
American nationality, even in the most devout Catholic, 
and that of the Jesuit or the native liegeman of Rome, 
there cannot fail to be an opposition more or less acute, 
though it may be hidden as far as possible under a decent 
veil. This was seen in the case of Father Hecker, who 
had begun his career as a Socialist at Brook Farm, and, 

578 



RELIGION 

as a convert to Catholicism, founded a missionary order, 
the keynote of which was that "man's life in the natu- 
ral and secular order of things is marching towards free- 
dom and personal independence." This he described as 
a radical change, and a radical change it undoubtedly 
was from the sentiments and the system of Loyola. 
Condemnation by Rome could not fail to follow. Edu- 
cation has evidently been the scene of a subterranean 
conflict between the Jesuit and the more liberal, or, what 
is much the same thing, the more American section. 
The American and liberal head of a college has been 
deposed, under decorous pretences, it is true, but still 
deposed. Envoys have come out from Rome to arbitrate 
and compose. Some of the Catholic prelates, it appears, 
are very willing to show their liberality by co-operating 
in charitable work with the clergy of Protestant churches ; 
others decline that association. One prelate, at all 
events is an active politician and a conspicuous wor- 
shipper of the flag. Others strictly confine themselves 
to the ecclesiastical sphere. The laity in general seem 
to take little account of these variations, regarding them 
rather as personal peculiarities than as divisions of the 
Church In the American or any other branch of the 
Roman Catholic Church freedom of inquiry and advance 
in thought are of course impossible. Nothing is possible 
but immobility, or reaction such as that of the Syllabus. 
Dr Brownson, like Hecker, a convert, showed after his 
conversion something of the spirit of free inquiry be- 
longing to his former state, though rather in the line of 
philosophy than in that of theology, properly speaking. 
But if he ever departed from orthodoxy he returned to it 
and made a perfectly edifying end. 

In our survey of the religious world we are apt to leave 
out of sight a fourth part or more of Christendom. When 
the Anglican Bishops some years ago were challenged 
to say whether they were or were not in communion with 

579 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the Eastern Church, that is with the Church of Russia, 
their answer was in effect that the Eastern Church was so 
remote that they could not tell. The Russian Church 
has been and is, in truth, remote from the life, the prog- 
ress, the thought, and the controversies of the other 
members of Christendom. It has passed through no 
crisis, undergone no change analogous either to the 
Reformation or to the Roman Catholic reaction. Such 
conflicts or controversies as it has had have been cere- 
monial, not doctrinal or spiritual. Its great reformer, if 
he can be so called, Nicon, was a thorough-going cere- 
monialist and initiated no doctrinal innovation. The 
movement of its non-conformists, the Starovers, is not a 
counterpart of that of Protestant non-conformists, but 
a ritualistic reaction. It differs theologically from the 
Roman Catholic and the Anglican churches on the 
article in the Creed respecting the procession of the 
Holy Ghost. But its more practical grounds of dif- 
ference probably are its abhorrence of images and of 
instrumental music and its practice of baptism by im- 
mersion. It is more sacramental than the Roman 
Catholic Church, administering the Eucharist as well 
as baptism to infants. While it abhors images, it 
adores pictures, provided they are archaic and not 
works of art, having an instinctive perception of the 
tendency of art to open the door for humanity. But 
it is less sacerdotal, compulsory marriage of the clergy, 
instead of celibacy, being its rule. Monastic it is, but 
its monachism is of the Eastern and eremitic type, not 
like the active monachism of the Franciscan, the Do- 
minican, or the Jesuit. The Russian Church is in- 
tensely national, a character stamped upon it by the 
long struggle for independence against the Moham- 
medan Tartars. The head of the nation is the head of 
the Church. The Czar is Pope, as the Emperor prac- 
tically was of that Byzantine Church of which the 

580 



RELIGION 

Russian Church is the daughter. He presides over the 
ecclesiastical councils. The abolition of the Patriarch- 
ate removed the last rival of his power. Peter the 
Great, when asked to restore the office, exclaimed, "I 
am your Patriarch," flung down his hunting knife on 
the table, and said, "There is your Patriarch/' 

Attempts have been made both by Gallicans and 
Anglicans to negotiate a union with the Eastern 
Church as a counterpoise to the Papacy. But they have 
been baffled by the intense nationality and antiquated 
ritualism rather than by the difference about an article 
in the Athanasian Creed. The upshot has been the 
intellectual immobility of the Russian Church, whose 
compartment in the theological history of the last cen- 
tury is a blank. 

Such is the position in which at the close of the last 
century Christendom seems to have stood. Outside 
the pale of reason — of reason; we do not say of truth — 
were the Roman Catholic and Eastern Churches; the 
Roman Catholic Church resting on tradition, sacerdotal 
authority, and belief in present miracles; the Eastern 
Church supported by tradition, sacerdotal authority, 
nationality, and the power of the Czar. Scepticism had 
not eaten into a Church, preserved, like that of Russia, 
by its isolation and intellectual torpor; though some 
wild sects had been generated, and Nihilism, threatening 
with destruction the Church as well as the state, had 
appeared on the scene. Into the Roman Catholic Church 
scepticism had eaten deeply, and had detached from 
her, or was rapidly detaching, the intellect of educated 
nations, while she seemed resolutely to bid defiance to 
reason by her Syllabus, her declaration of Papal in- 
fallibility, her proclamation of the Immaculate Concep- 
tion of Mary. Outside the pale of traditional authority 
and amenable to reason stood the Protestant Churches, 
urgently pressed by a question as to the sufficiency of 

58i 



THE PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY 

the evidences of supernatural Christianity, above all, 
of its vital and fundamental doctrines : the Fall of Man, 
the Incarnation, and the Resurrection. The Anglican 
Church, a fabric of policy compounded of Catholicism 
without a Pope and Biblical Protestantism, was in the 
throes of a struggle between those two elements, largely 
antiquarian and of little importance compared with the 
vital question as to the evidences of revelation and the 
divinity of Christ. 

In the Protestant churches generally sestheticism had 
prevailed. Even the most austere of them had intro- 
duced Church art, flowers, and tasteful music ; a ten- 
dency which, with the increased craving for rhetorical 
novelty in the pulpit, seemed to show that the simple Word 
of God and the glad tidings of salvation were losing 
their power and that human attractions were needed to 
bring congregations together. 

The last proposal had been that dogma, including 
the belief in the divinity of Christ, having become un- 
tenable should be abandoned, and that there should be 
formed a Christian Church with a ritual and sacraments, 
but without the Christian creed, though still looking up 
to Christ as its founder and teacher; an organization 
which, having no definite object and being held together 
only by individual fancy, would not be likely to last 
long. 

The task now imposed on the liegemen of reason seems 
to be that of reviewing reverently, but freely and impar- 
tially, the evidences both of supernatural Christianity 
and of theism, frankly rejecting what is untenable, and 
if possible laying new and sounder foundations in its 
place. To estimate the gravity of the crisis we have 
only to consider to how great an extent our civilization 
has hitherto rested on religion. It may be found that 
after all our being is an insoluble mystery. If it is, we 
can only acquiesce and make the best of our present habita- 

582 



RELIGION 

tion ; but who can say what the advance of knowledge 
may bring forth? Effort seems to be the law of our 
nature, and if continued it may lead to heights beyond 
our present ken. In any event, unless our inmost nature 
lies to us, to cling to the untenable is worse than useless ; 
there can be no salvation for us but in truth. 

Goldwtn Smith. 



THE END 




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